An Underwater Visual Navigation Method Based on Multiple ArUco Markers

Abstract

Underwater navigation presents crucial issues because of the rapid attenuation of electronic magnetic waves. The conventional underwater navigation methods are achieved by acoustic equipment, such as the ultra-short-baseline localisation systems and Doppler velocity logs, etc. However, they suffer from low fresh rate, low bandwidth, environmental disturbance and high cost. In the paper, a novel underwater visual navigation is investigated based on the multiple ArUco markers. Unlike other underwater navigation approaches based on the artificial markers, the noise model of the pose estimation of a single marker and an optimal algorithm of the multiple markers are developed to increase the precision of the method. The experimental tests are conducted in the towing tank. The results show that the proposed method is able to localise the underwater vehicle accurately.

Keywords

• underwater navigation
• artificial fiducial marker
• visual localisation