Autonomous navigation based on unscented-FastSLAM using particle swarm optimization for autonomous underwater vehicles

•PSO-UFastSLAM is proposed with better accuracy and particle maintenance.•Based on UFastSLAM, the PSO-UFastSLAM incorporates PSO.•Simulations and sea trials are conducted for experimental validation.

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is the crucial prerequisite for mobile robots to accomplish autonomy. In this paper, PSO-UFastSLAM based on the unscented-FastSLAM (UFastSLAM) and the particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed. The UFastSLAM combines unscented particle filter (UPF) and unscented Kalman filter (UKF) to estimate the robot poses and features. Furthermore, to prevent the particles degeneracy and impoverishment, PSO is adapted to optimize particles. The proposed method is applied on our own research platform, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), through sea trials in Tuandao Bay. The results of simulation and sea trial reveal that PSO-UFastSLAM has better accuracy and effectiveness in terms of estimation of robot and features while compared with UFastSLAM and standard FastSLAM.