Navigation and control are a largely unsolved problems for micro autonomous underwater vehicles (μAUVs). The main challenges are due to the lack of accurate underwater localization systems, which fit on-board of μAUVs. In this work, we present an integrated navigation and control architecture consisting of a low-cost embedded localization module and an underwater way-point tracking controller, which fulfills the requirements of μAUVs. The performance of the navigation and control system is benchmarked in two different experimental scenarios.

A hyperbolic acoustic system for underwater robot self-localization is presented. Anchored transducers send acoustic signals which are observed by a receiver. The system is passive with one-way signal transmission. Time differences of arrival (TDOAs) between the emitted signals are estimated by the receiver via cross-correlation. These TDOAs are fed to an Extended Kalman Filter to estimate the global position of the receiver. We describe the complete signal processing chain as well as challenges in hardware and software design. Experimental results in air and water show the feasibility of the system. This paper demonstrates that acoustic one-way localization is possible with off-the-shelf hardware in experimental test tanks.