Organizations: Dept of Computer and Information Science, University of Konstanz, Germany · Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Germany · Dept of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Accurate and continuous localization of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) in GPS-denied environments is a persistent challenge in marine robotics. In the absence of external position fixes, AUVs rely on inertial dead-reckoning, which accumulates unbounded drift due to sensor bias and noise. This paper presents BIND-USBL, a cooperative localization framework in which a fleet of Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs) equipped with Ultra-Short Baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning systems provides intermittent fixes to bound AUV dead-reckoning error. The key insight is that long-duration navigation failure is driven not by the accuracy of individual USBL measurements, but by the temporal sparsity and geometric availability of those fixes. BIND-USBL combines a multi-ASV formation model linking survey scale and anchor placement to acoustic coverage, a conflict-graph-based TDMA uplink scheduler for shared-channel servicing, and delayed fusion of received USBL updates with drift-prone dead reckoning. The framework is evaluated in the HoloOcean simulator using heterogeneous ASV-AUV teams executing lawnmower coverage missions. The results show that localization performance is shaped by the interaction of survey scale, acoustic coverage, team composition, and ASV-formation geometry. Further, the spatial-reuse scheduler improves per-AUV fix delivery rate without violating the no-collision constraint, while maintaining low end-to-end fix latency.
Figures & tables
Fig. 1: Multi-AUV boustrophedon coverage at L=60 m. The single ASV (star) is station-kept at the survey centroid; all four lawnmower strips fall within its HF uplink range = 100 m.
Fig. 2: Trajectory overview: L=140 m, 3 AUVs, 1 ASV (star, α0=0∘ ). The dashed blue circle marks the HF uplink range, and the dotted orange circle marks the MF downlink range. The upper lawnmower strip lies almost entirely outside the HF footprint.
Fig. 3: Fleet metrics for the single-ASV failure case ( L=140 m, 3 AUVs, 1 ASV, α0=0∘ ). Left: cross-track error over time; AUV 0 diverges unboundedly while AUV 1 –AUV 2 are bounded. Right: cumulative fix count; AUV 0 ’s count flatlines after the first few seconds, characteristic of coverage-limited starvation.
Fig. 4: Per-AUV CTE, fix count, and HF coverage for L=140 m, 3 AUVs, 2 ASVs across formation angles α0∈{0∘,30∘,60∘,90∘} (single representative run per angle). At α0=0∘ the two-ASV pair is aligned along the x -axis, leaving y -extreme AUVs unserved. A 30∘ rotation yields an 8× CTE reduction for AUV 0 with no change in hardware.
Config
AUV
Fixes
Cov. (%)
CTE (m)
Dist. (m)
1 ASV, 0∘
AUV 0
19
9
10.02
192
AUV 1
149
70
1.79
190
AUV 2
123
58
2.52
182
3 ASVs, 0∘
AUV 0
92
79
0.56
192
AUV 1
189
100
0.35
190
AUV 2
185
100
0.35
182
TABLE I: Per-AUV metrics for the coverage-failure and recovery cases ( L=140 m, 3 AUVs, single representative run).
Fig. 5: Mean CTE (m) across all formation angles and 20 seeds. Columns: survey side lengths 60 , 100 , 140 m. Rows: ASV count; horizontal axis: AUV count. Green ≤1 m (well-localized); red >4 m (navigation failure).
Fig. 6: Distance-normalised configuration sweep ( 20 seeds, mean ±1σ ). Left column: mean position error. Right column: applied fix rate. Rows: L=60 , 100 , 140 m. Colors denote formation angle; line styles: solid =1 ASV, dashed =2 ASVs, dotted =3 ASVs. The sharp transition from solid to dotted lines at L=140 m illustrates the binary nature of the coverage threshold.
School of Aerospace Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China · Khalifa University Center for Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS), Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi 127788, United Arab Emirates
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA · Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA