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Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) equipped with Side-Scan Sonar (SSS) play a critical role in seabed mapping, where precise navigation data are essential for mosaicking sonar images to delineate the seafloor’s topography and feature locations. However, the accuracy of AUV navigation, based on Strapdown Inertial Navigation System (SINS)/Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) systems, tends to degrade over long-term mapping, which compromises the quality of sonar image mosaics. This study addresses the challenge by introducing a post-processing navigation method for AUV SSS surveys, utilizing Factor Graph Optimization (FGO). Specifically, the method utilizes an improved Fourier-based image registration algorithm to generate more robust relative position measurements. Then, through the integration of these measurements with data from SINS, DVL, and surface Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) within the FGO framework, the approach notably enhances the accuracy of the complete trajectory for AUV missions. Finally, the proposed method has been validated through both the simulation and AUV marine experiments.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) frequently encounter challenges in providing reliable navigation and positioning within urban canyons due to signal obstruction. Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) offers an alternative for autonomous navigation, but they are susceptible to accumulating errors. To mitigate these influences, a LiDAR-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) system is often employed. However, these systems face challenges in drift and error accumulation over time. This paper presents a novel approach to loop closure detection within LiDAR-based SLAM, focusing on the identification of previously visited locations to correct time-accumulated errors. Specifically, the proposed method leverages the vehicular drivable area and IMU trajectory to identify significant environmental changes in keyframe selection. This approach differs from conventional methods that only rely on distance or time intervals. Furthermore, the proposed method extends the SCAN CONTEXT algorithm. This technique incorporates the overall distribution of point clouds within a region rather than solely relying on maximum height to establish more robust loop closure constraints. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through experiments conducted on the KITTI dataset with an enhanced accuracy of 6%, and the local scenarios exhibit a remarkable improvement in accuracy of 17%, demonstrating improved robustness in loop closure detection for LiDAR-based SLAM.

LiDAR-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) offer robustness against illumination changes, but the inherent sparsity of LiDAR point clouds poses challenges for continuous tracking and navigation, especially in feature-deprived scenarios. This paper proposes a novel LiDAR/SINS tightly integrated SLAM algorithm designed to address the localization challenges in urban environments characterized in sparse structural features. Firstly, the method extracts edge points from the LiDAR point cloud using a traditional segmentation method and clusters them to form distinctive edge lines. Then, a rotation-invariant feature—line distance—is calculated based on the edge line properties that were inspired by the traditional tightly integrated navigation system. This line distance is utilized as the observation in a Kalman filter that is integrated into a tightly coupled LiDAR/SINS system. This system tracks the same edge lines across multiple frames for filtering and correction instead of tracking points or LiDAR odometry results. Meanwhile, for loop closure, the method modifies the common SCANCONTEXT algorithm by designating all bins that do not reach the maximum height as special loop keys, which reduce false matches. Finally, the experimental validation conducted in urban environments with sparse structural features demonstrated a 17% improvement in positioning accuracy when compared to the conventional point-based methods.

Fish object detection and counting in pelagic fisheries face many challenges in complex environments. Sonar imaging technology offers a solution because it generates high-resolution images underwater. In this paper, we propose a sonar-based fish object detection and counting method using an improved YOLOv8 combined with BoT-SORT to address issues such as missed detection, false detection, and low accuracy caused by complex factors such as equipment motion, light changes, and background noise in pelagic environments. The algorithm utilizes the techniques of lightweight upsampling operator CARAFE, generalized feature pyramid network GFPN, and partial convolution. It integrates with the BoT-SORT tracking algorithm to propose a new region detection method that detects and tracks the schools of fish, providing stable real-time fish counts in the designated area. The experimental results indicate that while focusing on maintaining a lightweight design, the improved algorithm achieved a 3.8% increase in recall and a 2.4% increase in mAP0.5 compared to the original algorithm. This significantly impacts scientific and rational fishery planning, marine resource protection, and improved productivity. At the same time, it provides important data support for marine ecological monitoring, environmental protection, and fishery management, contributing to sustainable fishery development and marine ecology preservation.

This paper investigates an anticipatory activation anti-windup approach based on Linear Active Disturbance Rejection Control (LADRC) to address the influences of accelerated saturation on the actuators in a Miniaturized Inertial Stabilized Platform (MISP) with extreme external disturbance. The proposed method aims to eliminate the high-frequency vibrations on the Line of Sight (LOS) of electro-optical devices during actuator saturation. To achieve this, the Linear Extended State Observer (LESO) is modified by adding saturation feedback to the total disturbance observed state variable, which is operated as an anticipatory activation anti-windup compensator. The stability of the proposed controller is discussed, and the gains are optimized by the Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) constraints though quadratic programming and an H-infinite performance indicator. Additionally, as the multiple activated scheme for anti-windup, the effectiveness of immediate activation in dealing with accelerated saturation is compared and analyzed. These comparisons and verification are implemented through simulations, where the external disturbance is introduced using recorded attitude data from USV sailing. Finally, experiments are conducted on an MISP for a visual tracking system, demonstrating that the anticipatory activation mothed effectively suppresses high-frequency vibrations on the LOS during instances of accelerated saturation.

For seabed mapping, the prevalence of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) employing side-scan sonar (SSS) necessitates robust navigation solutions. However, the positioning errors of traditional strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) and Doppler velocity log (DVL) systems accumulated significantly, further exacerbated by DVL’s susceptibility to failure in complex underwater conditions. This research proposes an integrated navigation approach that utilizes factor graph optimization (FGO) along with an improved pre-integration technique integrating SSS-derived position measurements. Firstly, the reliability of SSS image registration in the presence of strong noise and feature-poor environments is improved by replacing the feature-based methods with a Fourier-based method. Moreover, the high-precision inertial measurement unit (IMU) pre-integration method could correct the heading errors of SINS significantly by considering the Earth’s rotation. Finally, the AUV’s marine experimental results demonstrated that the proposed integration method not only offers improved SSS image registration and corrects initial heading discrepancies but also delivers greater system stability, particularly in instances of DVL data loss.

Supercavitation technology can greatly improve the speed of underwater vehicles by reducing drag. However, the time-delay characteristic of a supercavitating vehicle presents control challenge. In this paper, a linear parameter-varying (LPV) time-delay model for a supercavitating vehicle is established by analysing the time-delay characteristics of the planing force. Moreover, considering that the cavitation radius is easily perturbed by external disturbances, a supercavitating LPV delay model depicted as a polytope is established. Based on the model, a predictive controller based on time-delay characteristics is designed. The controller can solve linear matrix inequalities (LMI) online to find the optimal solution at a given moment. In addition, the controller introduces a different Lyapunov function and multiple free control variables to reduce the system's conservativeness and expand the system's initial feasible region, which can improve the control performance of the system. A simulation verifies that the system exhibits good stability and robustness.

In view of the difficulties regarding that airborne navigation equipment relies on imports and the expensive domestic high-precision navigation equipment in the manufacturing field of Chinese navigable aircraft, a dual-antenna GNSS (global navigation satellite system)/MINS (micro-inertial navigation system) integrated navigation system was developed to implement high-precision and high-reliability airborne integrated navigation equipment. First, the state equation and measurement equation of the system were established based on the classical discrete Kalman filter principle. Second, according to the characteristics of the MEMS (micro-electric-mechanical system), the IMU (inertial measurement unit) is not sensitive to Earth rotation to realize self-alignment; the magnetometer, accelerometer and dual-antenna GNSS are utilized for reliable attitude initial alignment. Finally, flight status identification was implemented by the different satellite data, accelerometer and gyroscope parameters of the aircraft in different states. The test results shown that the RMS (root mean square) of the pitch angle and roll angle error of the testing system are less than 0.05° and the heading angle error RMS is less than 0.15° under the indoor static condition. A UAV flight test was carried out to test the navigation effect of the equipment upon aircraft take-off, climbing, turning, cruising and other states, and to verify the effectiveness of the system algorithm.

A feedforward strap-down control with a compensator base on the linear extended state observer (LESO) is proposed for a miniaturized camera stabilized platform, which reduces the influence of the dead zone in speed regulation and uncertainties in parameters to reduce the level of angular bias to the field of vision (FOV) in a low-cost stabilized platform. Firstly, the feedforward control is inspired by an approximate linear model proposed for the dead zone to improve the response velocity of the system when tracking the varying reference. Then, the compensator, combining the LESO and proportional differential (PD) law, is designed to eliminate the disturbances including the model bias in the dead zone, inaccuracy in the plant model, and external disturbance. Moreover, the observation performance of the LESO is improved by a preprocessor based on a tracking differentiator (TD) to deal with the time delay and nonlinearities in sampling the state variables. Meanwhile, the complex and uncertain control plant is also simplified by an approximate model combining a disturbance compensator for practical application. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed controller is verified and analyzed by the simulation, and its effectiveness is simultaneously validated by the 2-DOF camera stabilized platform.

Object extraction is an important tool in many applications within the image processing and computer vision communities. You Only Look Once version 3 (YOLOv3) has been extensively applied to many fields as a state-of-the-art technique for object semantic detection. Despite its numerous characteristics, YOLOv3 has to be combined with appropriate image segmentation technologies to achieve effective 2D object extraction in real-time monitoring, robot navigation, and target search. In this article, the K-means algorithm is applied to the segmentation of depth images. Considering the inherent sensitivity to the randomness of the initial cluster center and the uncertainty of cluster number K in the initialization phase of the K-means algorithm, this article proposes a new method that combines the semantic image information with the image depth information. Specifically, this method proposed to pre-classify the center depth of the object to determine the appropriate value of K required in the K-means algorithm. At the same time, the proposed algorithm improves the selection of the initial center via the maximin method. This article introduces a multi-parameter extraction method to enable to correctly identify the object of interest after image segmentation. The technique considers three parameters to achieve this: i) the elements of size, ii) the connected domain, and iii) the diagonal detection. Experiments using open-source datasets demonstrate that the average processing time and the segmentation accuracy of the improved K-means algorithm are 20.36% faster and 3.12% higher than the conventional K-means algorithm, respectively. The extraction accuracy of the proposed method is 6.69% higher than that of the SuperCut extraction method.

Disturbance from luminance variation in the identification of visual sensors causes instability in the control system of target tracking, which leads to field of vision (FOV) motion and even the target missing. To solve this problem, a linear active disturbance reject controller (LADRC) is adopted to the visual tracking and inertial stable platform (VTISP) for the first time to improve the system’s robustness. As a result, the random disturbance from identification can be smoothed by the tracking differentiator (TD).An improved linear extended state observer (LESO) modified by the TD is provided to obtain the high-order state variables for feedback. That makes the system avoid noise in a differential process from the MEMS gyroscope and enhances the response time and stability in tracking control. Finally, simulation and experimental studies are conducted, and the feasibility of the LADRC is verified. Moreover, compared with the other controller in the VTISP for remote sensing, the superiority of the LADRC in system response time and stability is proved by the experiments.

Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technologies based on point features achieve high positioning accuracy and complete map construction. However, despite their time efficiency and accuracy, such SLAM systems are prone to instability and even failure in poor texture environments. In this paper, line features are integrated with point features to enhance the robustness and reliability of stereo SLAM systems in poor texture environments. Firstly, method Edge Drawing lines (EDlines) is applied to reduce the line feature detection time. Meanwhile, the proposed method improves the reliability of features by eliminating outliers of line features based on the entropy scale and geometric constraints. Furthermore, this paper proposes a novel Bags of Word (BoW) model combining the point and line features to improve the accuracy and robustness of loop detection used in SLAM. The proposed PL-BoW technique achieves this by taking into account the co-occurrence information and spatial proximity of visual words. Experiments using the KITTI and EuRoC datasets demonstrate that the proposed stereo Point and EDlines SLAM (PEL-SLAM) achieves high accuracy consistently, including in challenging environments difficult to sense accurately. The processing time of the proposed method is reduced by 9.9% and 4.5% when compared to the Point and Line SLAM (PL-SLAM) and Point and stereo Point and Line based Visual Odometry (sPLVO) methods, respectively.

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) provides accurate positioning data for vehicular navigation in open outdoor environment. In an indoor environment, Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) establishes a two-dimensional map and provides positioning data. However, LIDAR can only provide relative positioning data and it cannot directly provide the latitude and longitude of the current position. As a consequence, GNSS/Inertial Navigation System (INS) integrated navigation could be employed in outdoors, while the indoors part makes use of INS/LIDAR integrated navigation and the corresponding switching navigation will make the indoor and outdoor positioning consistent. In addition, when the vehicle enters the garage, the GNSS signal will be blurred for a while and then disappeared. Ambiguous GNSS satellite signals will lead to the continuous distortion or overall drift of the positioning trajectory in the indoor condition. Therefore, an INS/LIDAR seamless integrated navigation algorithm and a switching algorithm based on vehicle navigation system are designed. According to the experimental data, the positioning accuracy of the INS/LIDAR navigation algorithm in the simulated environmental experiment is 50% higher than that of the Dead Reckoning (DR) algorithm. Besides, the switching algorithm developed based on the INS/LIDAR integrated navigation algorithm can achieve 80% success rate in navigation mode switching.

It is of great importance for pipeline systems to be is efficient, cost-effective and safe during the transportation of the liquids and gases. However, underground pipelines often experience leaks due to corrosion, human destruction or theft, long-term Earth movement, natural disasters and so on. Leakage or explosion of the operating pipeline usually cause great economical loss, environmental pollution or even a threat to citizens, especially when these accidents occur in human-concentrated urban areas. Therefore, the surveying of the routed pipeline is of vital importance for the Pipeline Integrated Management (PIM). In this paper, a comprehensive review of the Micro-Inertial Measurement Unit (MIMU)-based intelligent Pipeline Inspection Gauge (PIG) multi-sensor fusion technologies for the transport of liquids and gases purposed for small-diameter pipeline (D < 30 cm) surveying is demonstrated. Firstly, four types of typical small-diameter intelligent PIGs and their corresponding pipeline-defects inspection technologies and defects-positioning technologies are investigated according to the various pipeline defects inspection and localization principles. Secondly, the multi-sensor fused pipeline surveying technologies are classified into two main categories, the non-inertial-based and the MIMU-based intelligent PIG surveying technology. Moreover, five schematic diagrams of the MIMU fused intelligent PIG fusion technology is also surveyed and analyzed with details. Thirdly, the potential research directions and challenges of the popular intelligent PIG surveying techniques by multi-sensor fusion system are further presented with details. Finally, the review is comprehensively concluded and demonstrated.

The artificial fish swarm algorithm (AFSA) is one of the state-of-the-art swarm intelligent techniques, which is widely utilized for optimization purposes. Fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) error parameters such as scale factors, biases and misalignment errors are relatively unstable, especially with the environmental disturbances and the aging of fiber coils. These uncalibrated error parameters are the main reasons that the precision of FOG-based strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) degraded. This research is mainly on the application of a novel artificial fish swarm algorithm (NAFSA) on FOG error coefficients recalibration/identification. First, the NAFSA avoided the demerits (e.g., lack of using artificial fishes’ pervious experiences, lack of existing balance between exploration and exploitation, and high computational cost) of the standard AFSA during the optimization process. To solve these weak points, functional behaviors and the overall procedures of AFSA have been improved with some parameters eliminated and several supplementary parameters added. Second, a hybrid FOG error coefficients recalibration algorithm has been proposed based on NAFSA and Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) approaches. This combination leads to maximum utilization of the involved approaches for FOG error coefficients recalibration. After that, the NAFSA is verified with simulation and experiments and its priorities are compared with that of the conventional calibration method and optimal AFSA. Results demonstrate high efficiency of the NAFSA on FOG error coefficients recalibration.

As the restaurant industry is facing labor shortage issues, the use of meal delivery robots instead of waiters/waitresses not only allows the customers to experience the impact of robot technology but also benefits the restaurant business financially by reducing labor costs. Most existing meal delivery robots employ magnetic navigation technologies, which require magnetic strip installation and changes to the restaurant decor. Once the moving path is changed, the magnetic strips need to be re-laid. This study proposes multisource information fusion, i.e., the fusion of ultra-wide band positioning technology with an odometer and a low-cost gyroscope accelerometer, to achieve the positioning of a non-rail meal delivery robot with navigation. By using a low-cost electronic compass and gyroscope accelerometer, the delivery robot can move along a fixed orbit in a flexible and cost-effective manner with steering control. Ultra-wide band (UWB) and track estimation algorithm are combined by extended Kalman filter (EKF), and the positioning error after fusion is about 15 cm, which is accepted by restaurants. In summary, the proposed approach has some potential for commercial applications.

Velocity information from the odometer is the key information in a reduced inertial sensor system (RISS), and is prone to noise corruption. In order to improve the navigation accuracy and reliability of a 3D RISS, a method based on a tracking differentiator (TD) filter was proposed to track odometer velocity and acceleration. With the TD filter, an input signal and its differential signal are estimated fast and accurately to avoid the noise amplification that is brought by the conventional differential method. The TD filter does not depend on an object model, and has less computational complexity. Moreover, the filter phase lag is decreased by the prediction process with the differential signal of the TD filter. In this study, the numerical simulation experiments indicate that the TD filter can achieve a better performance on random noises and outliers than traditional numerical differentiation. The effectiveness of the TD filter on a 3D RISS is demonstrated using a group of offline data that were obtained from an actual vehicle experiment. We conclude that the TD filter can not only quickly and correctly filter velocity and estimate acceleration from the odometer velocity for a 3D RISS, but can also improve the reliability of the 3D RISS.

To solve the self-alignment problem of the Strapdown Inertial Navigation System (SINS), a novel adaptive filter based on Complementary Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (CEEMD) is proposed. The Gravitational Apparent Motion (GAM) is used in the coarse alignment, and the problem of obtaining the attitude matrix between the body frame and the navigation frame is attributed to obtaining the matrix between the initial body frame and the current navigation frame using two gravitational apparent motion vectors at different moments. However, the accuracy and time of this alignment method always suffer from the measurement noise of sensors. Thus, a novel adaptive filter based on CEEMD using an l 2 -norm to calculate the similarity measure between the Probability Density Function (PDF) of each Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF) and the original signal is proposed to denoise the measurements of the accelerometer. Furthermore, the advantage of this filter is verified by comparing with other conventional denoising methods, such as PDF-based EMD (EMD-PDF) and the Finite Impulse Response (FIR) digital low-pass filter method. The results of the simulation and experiments indicate that the proposed method performs better than the conventional methods in both alignment time and alignment accuracy.

Modern parking lots have gradually developed into underground garages to improve the efficient use of space. However, the complex design of parking lots also increases the demands on vehicle navigation. The traditional method of navigation switching only uses satellite signals. After the Position Dilution Of Precision (PDOP) of satellite signals is over the limit, vehicle navigation will enter indoor mode. It is not suitable for vehicles in underground garages to switch modes with a fast-response system. Therefore, this paper chooses satellite navigation, inertial navigation, and the car system to combine navigation. With the condition that the vehicle can freely travel through indoor and outdoor environments, high-precision outdoor environment navigation is used to provide the initial state of underground navigation. The position of the vehicle underground is calculated by the Dead Reckoning (DR) navigation system. This paper takes advantage of the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithm to provide two freely switchable navigation modes for vehicles in ground and underground garages. The continuity, robustness, fast response, and low cost of the indoor and outdoor switching navigation methods are verified in real-time systems.

Robot navigation is a fundamental problem in robotics and various approaches have been developed to cope with this problem. Despite the great success of previous approaches, learning-based methods are receiving growing interest in the research community. They have shown great efficiency in solving navigation tasks and offer considerable promise to build intelligent navigation systems. This paper presents a goal-directed robot navigation system that integrates global planning based on goal-directed end-to-end learning and local planning based on reinforcement learning (RL). The proposed system aims to navigate the robot to desired goal positions while also being adaptive to changes in the environment. The global planner is trained to imitate an expert’s navigation between different positions by goal-directed end-to-end learning, where both the goal representations and local observations are incorporated to generate actions. However, it is trained in a supervised fashion and is weak in dealing with changes in the environment. To solve this problem, a local planner based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is designed. The local planner is first implemented in a simulator and then transferred to the real world. It works complementarily to deal with situations that have not been met during training the global planner and is able to generalize over different situations. The experimental results on a robot platform demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed navigation system.

Improving the performance of interferometric fiber optic gyroscope (IFOG) in harsh environments, such as magnetic field and temperature field variation, is necessary for its practical applications. This paper presents an investigation of Faraday effect-induced bias error of IFOG under varying temperature. Jones matrix method is utilized to formulize the temperature dependence of Faraday effect-induced bias error. Theoretical results show that the Faraday effect-induced bias error changes with the temperature in the non-skeleton polarization maintaining (PM) fiber coil. This phenomenon is caused by the temperature dependence of linear birefringence and Verdet constant of PM fiber. Particularly, Faraday effect-induced bias errors of two polarizations always have opposite signs that can be compensated optically regardless of the changes of the temperature. Two experiments with a 1000 m non-skeleton PM fiber coil are performed, and the experimental results support these theoretical predictions. This study is promising for improving the bias stability of IFOG.