Cooperative localization of multiple UUVs with communication delays - A real-time update method based on path prediction

A manner of cooperative localization for master-slave multiple UUVs (unmanned underwater vehicles) is investigated. To solve the problem of acoustic communicating and measurement delay during cooperative localization, based on path prediction of master UUV, an incoordinate interval real-time update (IIRU) method without state reverse is proposed to improve the accuracy of the slave UUV localization. In order to update the relative ranging measurements in real-time, the method firstly predicts the path of the master UUV using a statistics modeling method. In addition, based on the incoordinate interval algorithm, real-time updating algorithms are designed corresponding to the different types of sensors. Simulation results prove the efficiency of the proposed method with communication delays.