Visual navigation and docking for a planar type AUV docking and charging system

Abstract As being increasingly used for underwater explorations, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are diversified in their structures and outlines to match up with various mission requirements, which brings challenges to the design of customized submerged docking stations. Aiming at providing a generalized solution, this paper proposes an omnidirectional and positioning-tolerant planar type AUV docking and charging platform, which has no constraints on AUV structures. In order to solve the planar-type docking issues, an integrated visual navigation and docking algorithm is developed for the miniaturized prototype AUV. The adopted monocular Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) program takes charge of the wide-range underwater locationing, and handles practical problems such as scale drift and tracking failure. A combined control strategy of horizontal dynamic positioning and vertical visual servo docking is developed for the terminal docking process. The strategy is robust against constant water flow disturbance and performs stable docking using a roll motion adjustment. The visual navigation and docking performances and other system functions are successfully validated in simulation, water pool experiment, and sea trial.