Navigation System for MACÁBOT an Autonomous Surface Vehicles Using GPS Aided Strapdown Inertial Navigation System

Abstract

In this work the design, implementation and real-time tests of a Navigation System (NS) for the Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) MACÁBOT is presented. The ASV MACÁBOT represents a versatile platform to perform several tasks in the marine environment, such as; ports maintenance, marine productive ecosystems studies, bathymetries. The NS is in charge of determining accurately the position, velocity and attitude of the ASV. It represents a fundamental component to autonomously carry out any of the aforementioned activities. In this work, the NS is developed based on a Global Positioning System Aided Strap-Down Inertial Navigation System (GPS-A-SDINS) using an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) sensor fusion algorithm (SFA). In addition, to provide an adaptive approach to the SFA tuning a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) is implemented. The NS was implemented using Robotic Operating System (ROS) benefiting from the advantages of heterogeneity, integration and hardware abstraction. The NS was tested in real time using the ASV-MACÁBOT showing satisfactory performance in both position and velocity estimates.