Ultra-Short Baseline Positioning System for Littoral Swarm Systems

The long-term goal of the Distributed Acoustic Mobile Positioning DAMP program is to develop a positioning system for use in littoral regions. The system will operate in a variety of conditions and will form the cornerstone of a multi-vehicle positioning and navigation system. We seek to implement such a system using an ultra-short baseline USBL positioning system to provide bearing information along with a round-trip time-of-flight measurement protocol to provide range information. In order to be useful for the systems contemplated swarms of robots, such a system must be inexpensive, small, lightweight, and energy efficient. Characterization of the surf zone SZ acoustic environment will be necessary in order to effectively select operating parameters such as frequency and intensity of the USBL system, however, the main objective of DAMP is to create a workable and working USBL system operable in the very shallow water VSW and SZ environments. One application of this technology is to VSWSZ mine remediation.