AUSLUN: A Fixed-Hover UAV--USV System for GNSS-Denied Maritime Search and Navigation
2026-06-29 • Robotics
Robotics
AI summaryⓘ
The authors developed a system called AUSLUN that helps unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) find and approach ships when GPS signals are blocked. They use a hovering drone equipped with special sensors to locate targets visually and guide the USV without relying on GPS. Their method involves smart scanning and combining different types of distance measurements to improve accuracy. Tests showed their approach works well in coastal areas without GPS and can recover if the drone loses sight of the target.
Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV)Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO)LocalizationBearing-Range LocalizationRecursive EstimatorLaser RangefindingSearch PlanningGPS Denial
Authors
Siyuan Yang, Zikai Jia, Hailiang Kuang, Xiaoyu He, Qizhi Guo, Yihao Dong, Shaoming He
Abstract
Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) denial can prevent an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) from both finding a distant vessel and maintaining a globally referenced approach. This paper presents AUSLUN (Automatic UAV Search, Localization, and USV Navigation), a fixed-hover aerial-surface system that uses a coastal unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which estimates its own pose through visual-inertial odometry (VIO), as a long-range sensing and navigation anchor. The central design shifts sensing motion from UAV translation to a zoom pod and closes the loop through three coupled elements: polygon-aware annular pod scanning, modality-aware bearing-range localization, and target-relative USV guidance with visual-loss recovery. The same gated recursive estimator uses laser range for the non-cooperative target and datalink range for the cooperative USV. Search-planning simulations show that the adaptive yaw bounds reduce scan time and redundant coverage relative to a matched fixed-sector scan, and GPS-referenced field data show that the gated recursive estimator outperforms non-recursive baselines in localization accuracy. An integrated maritime mission further demonstrates the complete search-to-navigation sequence, including a deliberately triggered visual-loss recovery. These results establish the feasibility and operating boundary of fixed-hover UAV assistance for stationary-target approach in coastal GNSS-denied environments. The source code and a video demonstration are publicly available at https://github.com/xirhxq/pod_search and https://youtu.be/S-5RkJs35JI.