BIND-USBL: Bounding IMU Navigation Drift using USBL in Heterogeneous ASV-AUV Teams

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Kedia, Pranav, Makam, Rajini, Hamann, Heiko, Sundaram, Suresh
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Kedia, Pranav
Makam, Rajini
Hamann, Heiko
Sundaram, Suresh
author_facet Kedia, Pranav
Makam, Rajini
Hamann, Heiko
Sundaram, Suresh
contents Accurate and continuous localization of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) in GPS-denied environments is a persistent challenge in marine robotics. In the absence of external position fixes, AUVs rely on inertial dead-reckoning, which accumulates unbounded drift due to sensor bias and noise. This paper presents BIND-USBL, a cooperative localization framework in which a fleet of Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs) equipped with Ultra-Short Baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning systems provides intermittent fixes to bound AUV dead-reckoning error. The key insight is that long-duration navigation failure is driven not by the accuracy of individual USBL measurements, but by the temporal sparsity and geometric availability of those fixes. BIND-USBL combines a multi-ASV formation model linking survey scale and anchor placement to acoustic coverage, a conflict-graph-based TDMA uplink scheduler for shared-channel servicing, and delayed fusion of received USBL updates with drift-prone dead reckoning. The framework is evaluated in the HoloOcean simulator using heterogeneous ASV-AUV teams executing lawnmower coverage missions. The results show that localization performance is shaped by the interaction of survey scale, acoustic coverage, team composition, and ASV-formation geometry. Further, the spatial-reuse scheduler improves per-AUV fix delivery rate without violating the no-collision constraint, while maintaining low end-to-end fix latency.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_11861
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle BIND-USBL: Bounding IMU Navigation Drift using USBL in Heterogeneous ASV-AUV Teams
Kedia, Pranav
Makam, Rajini
Hamann, Heiko
Sundaram, Suresh
Robotics
Multiagent Systems
Accurate and continuous localization of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) in GPS-denied environments is a persistent challenge in marine robotics. In the absence of external position fixes, AUVs rely on inertial dead-reckoning, which accumulates unbounded drift due to sensor bias and noise. This paper presents BIND-USBL, a cooperative localization framework in which a fleet of Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs) equipped with Ultra-Short Baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning systems provides intermittent fixes to bound AUV dead-reckoning error. The key insight is that long-duration navigation failure is driven not by the accuracy of individual USBL measurements, but by the temporal sparsity and geometric availability of those fixes. BIND-USBL combines a multi-ASV formation model linking survey scale and anchor placement to acoustic coverage, a conflict-graph-based TDMA uplink scheduler for shared-channel servicing, and delayed fusion of received USBL updates with drift-prone dead reckoning. The framework is evaluated in the HoloOcean simulator using heterogeneous ASV-AUV teams executing lawnmower coverage missions. The results show that localization performance is shaped by the interaction of survey scale, acoustic coverage, team composition, and ASV-formation geometry. Further, the spatial-reuse scheduler improves per-AUV fix delivery rate without violating the no-collision constraint, while maintaining low end-to-end fix latency.
title BIND-USBL: Bounding IMU Navigation Drift using USBL in Heterogeneous ASV-AUV Teams
topic Robotics
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11861