An Underwater Acoustic Localisation System for Assisted Human Diving Operations

In this paper we present a solution to the problem of estimating the position and orientation of a moving underwater object using acoustic range measurements relative to moving surface objects that have access to a global navigation system. We start with the description of a standard GPS Intelligent Buoy system (GIB) that employs an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF); then we adapt this principle for the concrete task of tracking a human diver utilizing moving autonomous surface crafts. To this effect, we will introduce an advanced measurement system that improves significantly the estimation quality especially in the described scenario. The paper concludes with a short description of the first sea trials of the new developed system.