International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems 18(3) (2020) 535-545 ISSN:1598-6446 eISSN:2005-4092

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12555-019-0686-0 http://www.springer.com/12555

Development of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle and Performance Evalu-

ation of Autonomous Navigation Technologies
Jinwoo Choi, Jeonghong Park, Jongdae Jung, Yoongeon Lee, and Hyun-Taek Choi* 

Abstract: The use of autonomous marine robots has been rapidly increasing in the development of marine environ-
ments. This paper presents the development of an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) and validation of autonomous
navigation technologies. The ASV was developed as a testbed to validate fundamental navigation technologies for
autonomous marine robots including both surface and underwater vehicles. The ASV was developed on a catama-
ran by integrating various sensors and power and electrical propulsion systems, navigation and control systems, and
communication devices. As fundamental navigation technologies for ASV, waypoint tracking and obstacle avoid-
ance are developed and tested. Further, using the ASV as a testbed to validate underwater navigation technologies,
two types of underwater localization methods were developed. First, an acoustic-based navigation was developed
by using acoustic sources as landmarks in underwater environment. The proposed acoustic-based navigation local-
ized both vehicle and source by Kalman filter-based SLAM. Second, terrain-based localization as geophysics-based
navigation was developed using a particle filter. Effective resampling can be achieved by using a measurement of
terrain roughness. Both acoustic and terrain-based underwater navigation methods are implemented with the devel-
oped ASV, and the performance of the navigation methods are evaluated by comparing the estimated localization
results to the ground truth acquired by GPS. Several field tests conducted in inland water environments demonstrate
the performance of the developed vehicle and navigation algorithms.

Keywords: Acoustic based navigation, autonomous surface vehicle, marine robot, terrain based localization.

1. INTRODUCTION A mothership was used to support the operation of the

Over the past several decades, demands for the devel-
opment of the marine environment have been rapidly in-
creasing. Marine environment has considerable possibil-
ities of development because it covers over 70% of the
surface area of the Earth and contains many important re-
sources. Thus, many countries attempt to develop and pro-
tect their own marine territories. Recently, various types
of marine robotic systems have been developed and uti-
lized for the development of the marine environment. Re-
motely operated vehicles (ROVs) and autonomous under-
water vehicles (AUVs) are widely used for underwater
applications such as environmental survey and resource
management [1–4]. Moreover, autonomous surface vehi-
cles (ASVs) also have been developed to perform marine
tasks that can be performed on the surface of the water
such as maritime surveillance and reconnaissance [5–7].
The operation of marine robots, especially in the un-
derwater environment, was mainly performed by ROVs.
ROV and the vehicle was operated by tele-operation with
wired connection between the ROV and the mothership.
Recent research trends regarding the development of ma-
rine robots emphasize on autonomous robots [8,9]. By de-
veloping autonomous marine robotic systems, the robot
can perform its tasks without the intervention of an op-
erator. AUVs have been developed and used to perform
underwater tasks, and ASVs have been used to perform
surface tasks. Furthermore, the cooperation of surface ve-
hicles and underwater vehicles is also used to perform
marine tasks [10]. It can dramatically reduce the opera-
tion cost because the surface vehicle can replace support-
ing vessel for the operation of underwater vehicles. Un-
derwater vehicles can be launched and recovered by an
autonomous surface vehicle so that complete autonomous
operation of marine robotic systems can be achieved [11].
Autonomous navigation technology is an essential ca-
pability of such autonomous marine robots. Autonomous
navigation capabilities including mapping, localization,

Manuscript received August 19, 2019; revised November 13, 2019; accepted November 23, 2019. Recommended by Associate Editor
Son-Cheol Yu under the direction of Editor-in-Chief Keum-Shik Hong. This research was supported by a grant from Endowment Projects of
“Development of core technology for cooperative navigation of multiple marine robots and underwater wireless cognitive network” funded
by Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean engineering.

Jinwoo Choi, Jeonghong Park, Jongdae Jung, Yoongeon Lee, and Hyun-Taek Choi are with Ocean System Engineering Research Division,
Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO), Daejeon 34103, Korea (e-mails: {jwchoi, jeonghong, jdjung, yglee,
htchoi}@kriso.re.kr).
* Corresponding author.

ICROS,
c KIEE and Springer 2020
536 Jinwoo Choi, Jeonghong Park, Jongdae Jung, Yoongeon Lee, and Hyun-Taek Choi
and guidance and control should be developed and inte-
grated for a fully-autonomous operation of marine robots.
The robot should recognize environmental entities such
as obstacles and bathymetric maps using its onboard sen-
sors, and it also should perform self-localization using
the geometric information of environmental entities. Con-
sidering the localization problem of autonomous marine
robots, the use of sensors is limited underwater. Most un-
derwater sensors rely on the use of acoustic signal such
as Doppler velocity log (DVL), multi-beam echo sounder
(MBES), and side-scan sonar. On the other hand, surface
vehicles can acquire the absolute location easier than un-
derwater vehicles because of the global navigation satel-
lite system (GNSS). However, when GNSS is denied or
interfered with, the surface vehicle needs to perform lo-
calization with onboard sensors such as optical cameras,
Lidar, and so on. In such a case, underwater navigation
technologies can be helpful for the localization of surface
vehicles.
This paper aims to develop fundamental technologies to
implement autonomous marine robot systems. It involves
two main parts: 1) the development of an ASV, and 2) the
validation of underwater navigation technologies using the
developed ASV. The ASV is developed to test the guid-
ance, navigation, and control algorithms in the surface en-
vironment. Fundamental technologies for the ASV such as
waypoint tracking and obstacle avoidance are developed
and tested. Along with its own purposes as a surface ve-
hicle, the ASV is used as a testbed for the validation of
underwater navigation methods. Because GPS is available
for the ASV, it is used as a reference position to validate
underwater navigation algorithms that are performed us-
ing underwater sensor data. In this paper, two types of un-
derwater navigation methods – acoustic-based navigation
and terrain-based navigation – are developed and tested.
The ASV is designed as a catamaran to maintain ma-
neuvering stability and to minimize a distortion of under-
water information caused by the motion information of
the ASV. The ASV is required to achieve a large flexible
payload for mounting a range of system components in-
cluding the guidance, navigation and control system, elec-
trical power and propulsion system, wireless communica-
tion devices, and the underwater navigation system. In ad-
dition, for autonomously achieving underwater informa-
tion gathering tasks, the fundamental autonomous navi-
gation capabilities of the ASV were implemented. Way-
point tracking and obstacle avoidance approaches are im-
plemented as essential maneuvering capabilities for au-
tonomous navigation in the on-board system.
The first underwater navigation method tested by the
ASV is acoustic-based navigation; this is one of the most
essential underwater navigation methods. Conventional
methods such as long baseline (LBL) and ultrashort base-
line (USBL) are widely used to localize underwater ve-
hicles and moving targets [12]. Several advanced meth-
ods have also been developed by applying robotics tech-
nologies such as simultaneous localization and mapping
(SLAM) [13, 14]. Our acoustic-based navigation is based
on the concept of inverted-USBL [15]. We assume that
an acoustic source is located in an underwater environ-
ment and it transmits an acoustic signal repeatedly. The
ASV equipped with signal acquisition system receives the
transmitted acoustic signal. Then, extended Kalman filter
(EKF)-based SLAM is performed to localize the vehicle
without any prior information of an acoustic source loca-
tion [16].
The second tested underwater navigation method is
terrain-based localization. Bathymetric measurements are
useful information both in underwater and surface navi-
gation when GNSS is denied [17–20] as mentioned. The
developed ASV equipped with a multibeam echo sounder
can obtain an array of bathymetric measurements, which
can be used in the localization with pre-surveyed terrain
maps. In this paper, terrain-based navigation (TBN) us-
ing sonar multibeam measurements is proposed and im-
plemented within a particle filter (PF) framework [16]. By
employing terrain roughness measures, a standard particle
filter framework is modified to resolve the particle impov-
erishment problem that occurs around areas with a smooth
terrain.
Fig. 1 shows an overview of the contents of this paper.
As shown, we first develop an ASV and it has two main
purposes: development of autonomous navigation tech-
nologies for an ASV and a testbed for validation of the
underwater navigation technologies.
This paper describes the abovementioned fundamental
technologies for the development of autonomous marine
robotic system. The system configuration and algorithm of
each method will be described. The presented methods are
implemented and validated with the developed ASV. The
remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section
2 presents the details of the developed autonomous sur-
face vehicle. Section 3 describes the acoustic-based under-
water navigation method. Section 4 describes the terrain-
based underwater navigation. Section 5 shows experimen-
tal results of the field tests of the developed system and
Fig. 1. Development of an ASV and its purposes: devel-
opment of autonomous navigation technologies for
surface vehicles and the testbed for the validation
of underwater navigation technologies.
 Development of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle and Performance Evaluation of Autonomous Navigation ... 537

navigation methods. Fianlly, Section 6 presents the con-

clusion and future directions.

2. DEVELOPMENT OF AUTONOMOUS
SURFACE VEHICLE

2.1. Hardware configuration

The ASV platform is developed based on a catamaran
(length: 4.1 m; width: 2.4 m). In particular, the vehicle
is integrated with various component systems, including
electrical thrusters and power, electronic sensors and de-
vices, on-board computers, and wireless communication
systems, as shown in Fig. 2. Fig. 3. Hardware connections.
Twin electric outboard thrusters are mounted at the
stern of each hull. For supplying electrical power, three
high-performance lithium batteries are installed. Each Table 1. Acoustic devices and operating frequencies.
battery module includes a battery management system
Model Frequency
(BMS) and its capacity is determined considering the op-
MBES Imagenex Model 837B 260 kHz
erating hours of the vehicle. To measure the motion in-
DVL Teledyne RDI Explorer 600 kHz
formation of the vehicle in real-time, a GPS-compass, an
Acoustic Modem Subnero Unet modem 18-36kHz
attitude heading reference system (AHRS), and a fiber op-
tic gyro (FOG) are mounted. As a situational awareness
system, optical sensors (e.g., stereo camera and Lidar) are sors. These three acoustic devices use different operating
used to detect objects floating on the water. Wireless local frequencies that do not overlap, and therefore, they can be
area networks using wireless fidelity and RF devices are used simultaneously without interference.
deployed to reciprocally communicate an operation com-
mand and the current state of the vehicle. Furthermore, for
2.2. Autonomous navigation system
preventing emergencies, a wireless remote stop and on-
board kill switches are configured as an emergency sys- For autonomously achieving various tasks, autonomous
tem. Details on these hardware connections for each sen- navigation approaches for tracking the preassigned way-
sor and device component are illustrated in Fig. 3. points and for avoiding objects on the water are funda-
The developed ASV is equipped with three acoustic mentally required. A closed-loop controller is applied to
sensors: MBES, DVL, and acoustic modem. Table 1 lists control the course of the vehicle toward the goal waypoint.
the models and operating frequency of these acoustic sen- For a collision-free path with a stationary object, a path
planning approach is implemented.

2.2.1 Waypoint guidance and control approach

Waypoints are preferentially assigned according to the
tasks to be performed and they can be automatically gen-
erated by a path planner – a module for collision-free
path planning during the tasks. Since the vehicle is de-
veloped as a nonholonomic system, its motion model for
guidance and control approaches is simplified as a three
degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) kinematic model. In addition,
the guidance approach for minimizing the line-of-sight
(LOS) and cross-track errors is employed. The conven-
tional proportional-derivative (PD) controller is designed
and implemented to control the course of the vehicle to-
ward the goal waypoints. During task activation, a control
input (δτ ) of each thruster is determined by the LOS and
cross-track guidance can be expressed as
Fig. 2. ASV platform designed by KRISO. Various sen-
p d p d ˙
sors and devices mounted for autonomous naviga- δτ = ρ(klos ψe + klos ψ̇e ) + (1 − ρ)(kcte dcte + kcte dcte ).
tion of the vehicle. (1)
538 Jinwoo Choi, Jeonghong Park, Jongdae Jung, Yoongeon Lee, and Hyun-Taek Choi
p d
Here, klos and klos are the proportional and differential gain
p
coefficients for the LOS guidance, respectively, and kcte
d
and kcte are the proportional and differential gain coeffi-
cients for the cross-track guidance, respectively. The con-
trol gains include the meaning of the transfer coefficient
that adjusts each unit. The variables ψe and ψ̇e denote
the heading angle error of the vehicle and its differential
value, and de and d˙e represent the cross-track error and its
differential value, respectively. Moreover, ρ is defined as
the ratio of the distance to the current goal waypoint from
the vehicle position to the distance between the current
and the previous goal waypoints. If ρ is larger than 1, ρ
is set to 1. Accordingly, the weighting of each guidance
approach is adjusted using ρ.
2.2.2 Collision avoidance approach
A reliable collision avoidance scheme is an essential
capability for the autonomous navigation of a vehicle.
The scheme consists of three modules: evaluation of col-
lision risk module, collision-free path planning module,
and guidance and control module, as shown in Fig. 4. We
adopted the collision avoidance scheme from the author’s
previous study [21], wherein the method was verified via
numerical simulations. In this study, the collision avoid-
ance scheme is implemented in the real system. In this
scheme, for estimating the motion information of the de-
tected object, the position information acquired from the
GPS of the object is used, and the relative measurement in-
formation is calculated. Herein, the measured information
includes an uncertainty caused by the inherent measure-
ment characteristics of each sensor. Hence, the quantita-
tive collision risk between the ASV and objects is eval-
uated by a probabilistic approach, and the collision-free
path is planned with the minimum turning radius of the
vehicle.
In the evaluation of a collision risk module, the trajec-
tory for each object is predicted over a prespecified time
horizon in the future. For this purpose, the position, ve-
locity, and courses of each object are used. In addition,
the uncertainty for each estimated information can be rep-
resented using a probability density function under the
assumption of a multivariate Gaussian distribution in a
Fig. 4. Collision avoidance scheme of the ASV with re-
spect to objects.
horizontal plane. For considering the uncertainty informa-
tion and predicted trajectory for each object, the collision
risk evaluation approach proposed in [22] is applied in
this study. For the efficient computation of the collision
risk, a safe separation zone and uncertainty with respect
to each object are respectively combined through coor-
dinate transformation. Considering the combined uncer-
tainty and the combined safe boundary zone as a circular
shape around the center position of each object, for com-
puting a collision probability over the time interval [t0 ,t]
as a quantitative collision risk, the collision probability at
time t can be expressed as
Z t
Pic (t) = Pic (t0 ) + Ṗic (τ)dτ, (2)
t0
where Ṗic (t) is the rate of change of uncertainty through
the boundary of the combined safe separation zone (For
more details refer to [22]).
In the collision-free path planning module, areas where
there exists a likelihood of collision between the vehicle
and an object in a horizontal plane are classified as col-
lision risk zones (CRZs) during the trajectory prediction
process. In the previous module, if the evaluated collision
risk is exceeded over a predefined criterion, CRZ is con-
figured on the grid map in the horizontal plane. In particu-
lar, the approximated rectangular boundary including the
boundary of CRZ is extracted for the simplification of the
process. Two points in each corner of the approximated
rectangular are extracted as local waypoints for collision
avoidance. Subsequently, the collision-free path passing
through the feature points is then generated by the Dubins
curve approach [23] considering the turning radius of the
vehicle.
For following the planned collision-free path, the way-
point guidance and control approach proposed in this
study is applied in the guidance and control module.
Through iterative field tests, the controller gains are tuned
to maintain stable performance against disturbances.
3. ACOUSTIC-BASED NAVIGATION
The first method validated with the ASV is acoustic-
based navigation. Our acoustic-based navigation method
utilizes acoustic sources as underwater landmarks. We as-
sume that acoustic sources located in the underwater envi-
ronment are staionary and transmit specific acoustic sig-
nals repeatedly. The vehicle is equipped with a signal
acquisition system that consists of several hydrophones
to estimate the relative range and bearing information of
the acoustic source. The estimated acoustic source infor-
mation is used to perform underwater localization. EKF-
based SLAM is performed by fusing inertial sensors with
the acoustic information to localize the vehicle without
prior information of source locations.
 Development of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle and Performance Evaluation of Autonomous Navigation ...
3.1. System configuration
The acoustic signal processing system is developed
based on a conventional acoustic modem of Unet mo-
dem from Subnero in Singapore [24]. The Unet under-
water acoustic modem is fundamentally used for under-
water communication. Therefore, it has basic functions of
acoustic signal transmission and acquisition. Furthermore,
it provides ranging function between two modems. The
Unet modem provides both one-way and two-way rang-
ing functions.
The proposed acoustic-based navigation uses the typi-
cal modem as an acoustic source. The acoustic modem is
installed in an underwater environment and it transmits a
specific acoustic signal so that it can be used as an artifi-
cial landmark in the underwater environment. Moreover,
a customized modem is developed for the signal acquisi-
tion system of the transmitted acoustic signal. Based on
the typical Unet modem, we customized the modem by
attaching 4 B&K 8103 additional hydrophones. The ad-
ditional hydrophones are used to estimate bearing infor-
mation. The developed acoustic modem is installed in the
ASV and used to estimate the relative range and bearing
of the landmark modem. The acquisition of the relative
geometric information of the acoustic source is similar to
the concept of USBL.
Fig. 5 shows the conceptual and real images of the de-
veloped underwater acoustic localization system. In the
real image, the right modem shows the developed modem
with additional hydrophones and the left one shows the
typical modem used as an acoustic source, respectively.
As mentioned, the acoustic source is used as a landmark in
underwater environments for the autonomous navigation
of the vehicle. Two modems perform clock synchroniza-
tion by using two-way ranging at the beginning of local-
ization. After clock synchronization, the landmark modem
transmits a specific signal for source localization, and the
custom modem is used as a receiver to localize both the
vehicle and the source. The signal comprises three parts:
preamble, header, and data. The data part is a chirp sig-
Fig. 5. Acoustic modem-based underwater localization
system. Left: a pair of typical and custom modems,
and Right: conceptual drawings of custom modem.
539
nal and is used for bearing estimation. The bearing is es-
timated by the time difference of arrivals (TDOA) of two
acoustic signals acquired by a pair of hydrophones.
3.2. EKF SLAM using acoustic signal
Fig. 6 shows the acoustic-based navigation method us-
ing acoustic source. The typical acoustic modem is used
as the acoustic source which transmit a specific acous-
tic signal. The vehicle equipped with the custom modem
receives the transmitted signal and estimates the relative
geometric information of the source. First, the range in-
formation between the vehicle and the acoustic source is
acquired by one-way ranging. We use one-way ranging
method instead of two-way ranging to perform localiza-
tion processes more frequently. The range information can
be acquired simply by using the clock difference between
the transmission and receiving times because both clocks
are synchronized in the initialization step. Then, the bear-
ing is estimated by TDOA of two acoustic signals acquired
by a pair of hydrophones. When two hydrophones receive
the acoustic signal transmitted by a source, then we can
detect the signal in the received two acoustic signals with
a specific time delay (δt ). By using the TDOA, the direc-
tional angle of the acoustic source can be acquired as
θs = cos−1 (c · δt /d), (3)
where c and d represent the speed of sound underwater
and the spacing between two hydrophones as shown in
Fig. 6, respectively.
The estimation of bearing information is achieved by
a probabilistic method. The time delay between the two
acoustic signals is represented by a probability density
function. Then, it is recursively calculated by a Bayesian
update process. The motion model for the probability cal-
culation was used as motion of the vehicle (us ), and the
Fig. 6. Acoustic-based navigation using range and bearing
information of acoustic source.
540 Jinwoo Choi, Jeonghong Park, Jongdae Jung, Yoongeon Lee, and Hyun-Taek Choi
measurement model was used by the generalized cross
correlation of the current acoustic signals (zs ) [25].
P(δt = τ|zs1:t , us1:t )
= η · P(zst |δt = τ)P(δt = τ|zs1:t−1 , us1:t ). (4)
The detailed explanations for each parameter and direc-
tion estimation can be found in our previous literature
[26].
The localization process of the proposed acoustic-
based underwater navigation is performed by EKF-based
SLAM. It fuses inertial sensors of the vehicle and geo-
metric information of the acoustic source to localize both
the vehicle and acoustic source. The state vector of EKF-
SLAM is defined as
x(t) = [xv (t), xs (t)] , (5)
where xv is the state vector of the vehicle pose, and xs
is the state vector of the acoustic source location, respec-
tively.
The state vector of the vehicle pose is defined as
xv = [x y z φ θ ψ u v w] , (6)
where the first six variables represent the position and at-
titude of the vehicle and the last three represent the linear
velocity in the body frame.
EKF SLAM is performed by two steps which are pre-
diction and correction steps. First, the prediction step is
performed using an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and
DVL. It calculates the current vehicle pose based on the
kinematic model of the vehicle.
x̂(t) = f (x(t − 1), ut ), (7)
where x̂ is the state vector of EKF SLAM estimation, f is
the motion model of the vehicle, and u is the control input,
which is acquired by IMU and DVL (8).
û(t) = [vt at ωt ] , (8)
where v is linear velocity, a is acceleration, and ω is rota-
tional velocity of the vehicle, respectively.
Then, in the correction step, the state of SLAM esti-
mation which consists of vehicle and source locations is
updated by using the acoustic measurement.
ẑ(t) = [rs (t), θs (t)], (9)
where rs and θs are the range and bearing measurements
for the acoustic source. The correction step updates the
locations of the vehicle and landmark modem. The EKF
SLAM estimation can provide the simultaneous localiza-
tion of both the vehicle and the source by performing
the above processes recursively. Therefore, the proposed
acoustic-based navigation can successfully perform un-
derwater vehicle localization without any prior informa-
tion of the source location.
4. TERRAIN-BASED NAVIGATION
This section describes our second underwater naviga-
tion method. In particular, terrain-based localization using
multibeam sonar observation is proposed. We assume that
the terrain map of the underwater environment is obtained
through a pre-survey.
4.1. Design of TBN filter
The navigation filter used for the proposed terrain-based
localization follows a standard framework of sequential
importance resampling (SIR) particle filter [16, 27]. It
maintains a set of N pose hypotheses, i.e., particles Xt =
(i)
{xt |i = 1, . . . , N}. This particle set realizes the posterior
probabilities of the target state xt by a set of weights Wt =
(i)
{wt |i = 1, . . . , N}. The process consists of three steps:
motion update, weight update, and resampling. These
steps are performed based on the designed vehicle mo-
tion and sensor observation models, which are explained
in detail in the following sections.
4.1.1 Motion update
In this step, particles are moved and dispersed accord-
ing to the vehicle motion model. We employ the velocity
motion model, that assumes vehicle motion is controlled
by two velocities, a linear velocity vt and a rotational ve-
locity ωt . The motion sensors used in the proposed TBN
are DVL and IMU, which provide measurements of vt and
ωt , respectively. This control input is applied to each par-
ticle in a probabilistic manner and it realizes uncertainty
in motion prediction. We first sample a control input and
an additional heading perturbation term γ̂ as
v̂ = vt + N (0, α1 vt2 + α2 ωt2 ), (10)
ω̂ = ωt + N (0, α3 v + α4 ωt2 ),
2
(11)
γ̂ = N (0, α5 vt2 + α6 ωt2 ), (12)
where N (0, σ ) is a sampled value from the normal dis-
tribution with zero mean and standard deviation σ . The
variables α1 to α6 are the parameters of the motion noise.
α1 and α2 introduce how much uncertainty in the mea-
surement of linear velocity grows with current linear and
angular velocity, respectively, and α3 and α4 similarly es-
tablish the uncertainty in angular velocity.
The vehicle pose is then updated by following equa-
tions:
(i) (i) (i)
xt+1 = xt + ∆xt , (13)
 ν̂ (i) (i) 
− ω̂ sin(ψt ) + ω̂ν̂ sin(ψt + ω̂∆t)
(i)  ν̂ cos(ψ (i) ) − ν̂ cos(ψ (i) + ω̂∆t) 
∆xt =  t t , (14)
 ω̂ ω̂
N (0, σz ) 
ω̂∆t + γ̂∆t
where σz is the disturbance in the z direction motion of the
vehicle owing to the wave.
 Development of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle and Performance Evaluation of Autonomous Navigation ... 541

4.1.2 Weight update

In this step, the weight of each particle is updated
based on the actual sonar range measurement and pre-
dicted range calculated from an observation model. Two
kinds of observation models, which are projection-based
and range-based, are generally used [18]. In the propose
method, we exploit the range-based model because it is
more informative in the case of multibeam observations.
The sonar range is predicted by casting a ray in the beam
direction and by finding a hit point in the terrain map. As
the number of beams used in the multibeam sonar sens-
ing is several hundreds, efficient ray casing is required. Fig. 7. Multibeam sonar range observation with ray cast-
Therefore, we employed a region of interest (ROI) to re- ing.
strain the search area for ray casting (Fig. 7). The ROI is
set as a bounding box centered and oriented with the cur-
rent pose with a pre-defined width and height to cover the
maximum roll and pitch of the vehicle.
Once the range is predicted, the particle weight can be
updated based on the following equation:
n  2 
(i) (i) 1 1  (i)
wt = wt−1 ∏ √ exp − 2 rk − rk ,
k=1 2πσr 2σr
(15)

where n is the number of sonar beams in a single scan,

(i)
rk is the estimated range between the i-th particle and the
terrain through the k-th beam, rk is the actual range mea-
surement of the k-th beam, and σr2 is the noise covariance
of range measurements.
Unfortunately, when the underwater terrain is flat, con-
ventional filter results in a particle impoverishment prob-
lem due to the lack of information. To resolve this prob-
lem, terrain roughness Rz from each sonar scan is calcu-
lated as
1
Rz = Σqi=1 (zpeak,i − zvalley,i ), (16)
q
where zpeak and zvalley are the i-th highest peak and lowest
valley respectively, and q is the number of z values used.
Then, we modified the weight update and resampling
procedures to adapt based on the Rz values. With smaller
Rz , the sensor covariance used in the weight update is se-
lectively assigned with larger values [28], and resampling
frequency is restrained. Fig. 8 shows the terrain smooth-
ness (1/Rz ) along the vehicle trajectory for the test site.
The proposed filter adaption method is applied to the area
with 1/Rz larger than a certain threshold value (shown in
yellow and red). Therefore, the proposed TBN method can
perform localization processes effectively.
5. FIELD EXPERIMENTS
This section presents experimental results. Several field
tests were carried out in an inland water environment
to demonstrate the performances of the developed ASV
Fig. 8. Terrain smoothness along the ASV trajectory.
and navigation methods. During the field tests, onboard
GPS was used in the satellite-based augmentation system
(SBAS) mode. The accuracy of the SBAS-GPS was 0.3 m.
5.1. Performance tests for the developed ASV
First, we performed several typical performance tests.
As a basic performance of the vehicle, the maximum
speed was measured as 6.35 knots and the turn radius was
11.75 m at the maximum speed. Field tests to validate the
implemented waypoint guidance and control algorithms
were also conducted. Fig. 9 shows the performance for
the guidance and control of the vehicle. In this test, the
cruising speed of the vehicle was set to be 3 knots and the
acceptance radius at each waypoint was given as 10 m.
As a result, the robot followed the given waypoints with
1.237 m root mean square cross-track error.
To validate the practical feasibility of the proposed
scheme for collision avoidance between the vehicle and an
object, the course of the vehicle was set to be toward the
surface object. In this test, we assumed that the position
of the obstacle was already known and measured by GPS.
542 Jinwoo Choi, Jeonghong Park, Jongdae Jung, Yoongeon Lee, and Hyun-Taek Choi
Fig. 9. Result of waypoint guidance and control approach
for validating the performance of the developed
ASV.
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 10. Snapshot images for the field test process of the
proposed collision avoidance scheme with a sta-
tionary object: (a) Approaching the object; (b)
Collision evasive maneuver; (c) Returning to the
goal point.
The probabilistic collision risk was periodically evaluated
for a 30 s time horizon with a 0.1 s interval, and the thresh-
old value for initiating the collision evasive maneuver was
set to 30%. Fig. 10 shows the field test processes of colli-
sion avoidance scheme implemented in the vehicle. When
the evaluated collision risk reached the predefined thresh-
old value, a collision-free path was planned and the colli-
sion evasive maneuver was initiated, as shown in Fig. 11.
As a result, the path was well generated and tracked, with-
out any violation between the vehicle and the stationary
object.
5.2. Performance tests of acoustic-based navigation
For the performance test of acoustic-based navigation,
the developed acoustic signal acquisition system of cus-
tom modem was installed in the developed ASV. The
vehicle is also equipped with DVL and IMU for dead-
reckoning sensors. A typical modem was in the exper-
imental environment with a mooring system. It period-
(a) (b)
Fig. 11. Results of the collision avoidance test: (a) The tra-
jectory of the vehicle and the generated collision-
free waypoints; (b) Results of the evaluated col-
lision risk, the variation of the heading angle of
the vehicle, and the relative range between two
objects.
Fig. 12. Experimental result of acoustic-based SLAM.
Black and red lines represent the estimated vehi-
cle locations of dead-reckoning and EKF SLAM,
respectively. Blue dots represent reference vehi-
cle location acquired from GPS.
ically transmitted acoustic signals, which consist of a
frame with current time clock for one-way ranging and a
chirp signal for bearing estimation, every 10 s. The vehicle
moved along a given path by waypoint tracking and per-
formed SLAM estimation by acquiring acoustic signals.
The vehicle acquired the transmitted signal with a 96 kHz
sampling rate and performed EKF SLAM processes using
the navigation sensors and acoustic signal data.
Fig. 12 shows the experimental result of the acoustic-
based SLAM. In the figure, the blue dots and the blue
 Development of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle and Performance Evaluation of Autonomous Navigation ... 543

Fig. 14. Given terrain map of the experimental environ-

ment (same area with Fig. 8).

Fig. 13. Estimation error of vehicle location of the

acoustic-based SLAM.

diamond represent the true locations of the vehicle and

acoustic source. The estimated vehicle location is shown
as red dots. It shows the accurate estimation of the vehi-
cle location. We used IMU data from the low-cost AHRS
sensor to show the effectiveness of the proposed acoustic
signal-based correction. Dead-reckoning using DVL and
IMU shows the accumulated and unbounded error of lo-
calization. On the other hand, the proposed acoustic-based
navigation provides accurate estimation and bounded er-
ror for both the vehicle and the acoustic source locations.
The red plus mark shows the estimated location of the
acoustic source. The estimated source location also shows
an accurate result.
Fig. 13 shows the vehicle location error of the proposed
acoustic-based SLAM by comparing the reference loca-
tions of GPS. The max error was less than 10 m while
the vehicle moved along the 1.3 km path. As shown in the
result, the proposed method provided accurate estimation Fig. 15. ASV tracking results. Dead-reckoning has drift
for both the vehicle and the acoustic source. It is achieved errors and conventional TBN fails in the flat area,
without any prior information of source location by EKF while the proposed TBN with Rz performs the
SLAM. best.

5.3. Performance tests of terrain-based navigation
The proposed terrain-based localization method is im-
plemented with the ASV, and the performance was eval-
uated. The developed ASV is used for data acquisition to
verify the proposed TBN method. The vehicle is equipped
with Imagenex 837B MBES for sonar sensing, and Tele-
dyne RDI Explorer DVL and Advanced Navigation Spa-
tial FOG for dead-reckoning. GPS was only used for the
waypoint tracking of the vehicle and reference path acqui-
sition to evaluate the accuracy of the localization.
The terrain map of the entire test area was obtained
through a pre-surveying step to perform the proposed
terrain-based localization. The surveys were conducted
several times to provide a dense terrain map of the test
area. The terrain map shown in Fig. 8 is a part of given
map used in the experiment. Fig. 14 shows shape of the
given terrain map. For the localization test, the vehicle was
moved by waypoint tracking and the acquired sensor data
of the navigation and sonar measurements. The waypoints
were provided as different locations with the path of pre-
survey for the thoroughness of the test.
Fig. 15 shows the experimental results of the terrain-
based localization. The tracking results of three meth-
ods that are dead-reckoning, conventional PF-TBN, and
proposed PF-TBN are presented. The accumulated er-
ror in DVL-inertial navigation system(INS) based dead-
544 Jinwoo Choi, Jeonghong Park, Jongdae Jung, Yoongeon Lee, and Hyun-Taek Choi
Table 2. Tracking performance.
ATE (m) DVL-INS TBN w/ Rz TBN w/o Rz
Mean 9.74 3.25 3.77
Max 19.4 13.9 14.1
reckoning is substantially compensated by TBN when the
underwater terrain provides rich information. When the
terrain is flat, conventional TBN (TBN without Rz ) shown
in the blue line resulted in a large error owing to the local
minima or particle impoverishment. In contrast, the ter-
rain adaptive PF (TBN with Rz ) shown in the magenta line
alleviates the problem. It could perform better localiza-
tion because of the effective weight update and resampling
processes using the proposed terrain roughness.
Table 2 summarizes the absolute trajectory error (ATE)
of the three methods. As shown, the proposed TBN
method provided successful localization for underwater
navigation.
6. CONCLUSION
This paper addresses the development of an ASV and
its performance evaluation. The ASV was developed as a
catamaran type and it has enough payload to be equipped
with various sensor systems. The guidance and control
algorithms for the vehicle autonomy were implemented.
Moreover, the vehicle was used as a testbed to validate
two kinds of underwater navigation methods which are
acoustic-based SLAM and terrain-based localization. Ex-
perimental results acquired by the actual experimental
data in an inland water environment demonstrated the
performance of the vehicle and the proposed navigation
methods.
As a short-term future direction, underwater navigation
algorithms addressed in this paper will be implemented
and tested using an autonomous underwater vehicle. For
the surface vehicle itself, environmental recognition using
various sensors such as optical camera, Lidar, and Radar
will be developed for autonomous navigation on the sur-
face of the water. As a long-term direction, the developed
navigation technologies might be fundamental technolo-
gies for the cooperative operation of surface and underwa-
ter vehicles.
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Jinwoo Choi received his B.S., M.S., and
Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering
from the Pohang University of Science
and Technology, Korea, in 2003, 2005, and
2011, respectively. He is currently a Senior
Researcher with the Korea Research Insti-
tute of Ships and Ocean Engineering, Dae-
jeon, Korea. His current research interests
are mainly concentrated on mapping, lo-
calization, SLAM, and acoustic source localization for marine
robots.
545
Jeonghong Park received his B.S. and
M.S. degrees in mechatronics engineering
from Chungnam National University, Dae-
jeon, South Korea, in 2005 and 2007, re-
spectively, and a Ph.D. degree in mechan-
ical engineering from the Korea Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology, Dae-
jeon, in 2016. He is currently a Senior Re-
searcher with the Korea Research Institute
of Ships and Ocean Engineering, Daejeon. He has been involved
in the areas of ocean robotics, vision-based perception and track-
ing, and path planning of autonomous ships and marine robots.
Jongdae Jung received his B.S. degree in
civil engineering from the Hanyang Uni-
versity, Seoul, Korea, in 2008, and his
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in civil and en-
vironmental engineering from the Korea
Advanced Institute of Science and Tech-
nology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 2010
and 2015, respectively. He is currently
a Senior Researcher with the Korea Re-
search Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO),
Daejeon, Korea. His current research interests include marine
robotics, underwater perception and navigation, and simultane-
ous localization and mapping.
Yoongeon Lee received his B.S. degree
in Division of Robotics from Kwangwoon
University, Seoul, Korea, in 2015 and an
M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering
from Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon,
Korea, in 2017. He is currently a Project
Based Research Scientist with the Korea
Research Institute of Ships and Ocean En-
gineering, Daejeon. He has been involved
in the control and design of marine robots.
Hyun-Taek Choi received his B.S., M.S.,
and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineer-
ing from Hanyang University, Seoul, Ko-
rea, in 1991, 1993, and 2000, respectively.
He was an Associate Research Engineer
with Korea Telecom from 1993 to 1995.
He was with the University of Hawaii,
as a Post-Doctoral Researcher, from 2000
to 2003. He is currently a Principal Re-
searcher with the Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean
Engineering, Daejeon, Korea. He has been leading several
projects related to underwater robotic applications, such as the
design of ROVs and AUVs, advanced control and navigation,
recognition using optic camera and sonar, and robot intelligence.
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