Sonardyne has kicked-off the Precise Positioning for Persistent AUVs (P3AUV) project to enable AUVs to navigate more effectively with less surface support and for longer periods.
The company will collaborate with partners L3 ASV and the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) on the project. The P3AUV project will involve trials using Sonardyne’s underwater positioning technology on the NOC’s Autosub Long Range and L3 ASV’s C-Worker 7 ASV. The project, which will include trials in Loch Ness, is due to run until late 2019.
The project will focus on increasing long-duration navigational accuracy by integrating low- and high-power inertial navigation system sensors. The accuracy of low-power sensors degrade over time and AUVs consequently often have to surface to reinitialise with a GPS fix. Including high-performance, high-power navigation instruments, like SPRINT INS, and integrating them with the low-power instruments to reduce power consumption will enable longer-duration independent deployments.
The project will also aim to improve positioning accuracy while underwater vehicles descend and ascend through the water column, through the integration of Doppler Velocity Log current measurement capabilities and INS technologies with on board data processing. Sonardyne’s SPRINT-Nav instrument, which combines the SPRINT INS sensor, Syrinx DVL and a high-accuracy pressure sensor in a single housing, can measure water current as well as velocity relative to the seabed. SPRINT-Nav will be able to use the water current velocity to reduce the dead reckoning mid-water navigation error to improve accuracy during the dive and surfacing phases of an operation.
The third area of the project will enable ASV deployment of seafloor positioning transponders for the benefit of the offshore energy industry AUV operations.
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