Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are emerging as a promising solution to help us explore and understand the ocean. The global market for AUVs is predicted to grow from 638 million dollars in 2020 to 1,638 million dollars by 2025 - a compound annual growth rate of 20.8 percent. To make AUVs suitable for a wider range of application-specific missions, it is necessary to deploy multiple AUVs to cooperatively perform the localization, tracking and formation tasks. However, weak underwater acoustic communication and the model uncertainty of AUVs make achieving this challenging. This book presents cutting-edge results regarding localization, tracking and formation for AUVs, highlighting the latest research on commonly encountered AUV systems. It also showcases several joint localization and tracking solutions for AUVs. Lastly, it discusses future research directions and provides guidance on the design of future localization, tracking and formation schemes for AUVs. Representing a substantial contribution to nonlinear system theory, robotic control theory, and underwater acoustic communication system, this book will appeal to university researchers, scientists, engineers, and graduate students in control theory and control engineering who wish to learn about the core principles, methods, algorithms, and applications of AUVs. Moreover, the practical localization, tracking and formation schemes presented provide guidance on exploring the ocean. The book is intended for those with an understanding of nonlinear system theory, robotic control theory, and underwater acoustic communication systems.

Ocean covers 70.8% of the Earth's surface, and it plays an important role in supporting all life on Earth. Nonetheless, more than 80% of the ocean's volume remains unmapped, unobserved and unexplored. In this regard, Underwater Sensor Networks (USNs), which offer ubiquitous computation, efficient communication and reliable control, are emerging as a promising solution to understand and explore the ocean. In order to support the application of USNs, accurate position information from sensor nodes is required to correctly analyze and interpret the data sampled. However, the openness and weak communication characteristics of USNs make underwater localization much more challenging in comparison to terrestrial sensor networks. In this book, we focus on the localization problem in USNs, taking into account the unique characteristics of the underwater environment. This problem is of considerable importance, since fundamental guidance on the design and analysis of USN localization is very limited at present. To this end, we first introduce the network architecture of USNs and briefly review previous approaches to the localization of USNs. Then, the asynchronous clock, node mobility, stratification effect, privacy preserving and attack detection are considered respectively and corresponding localization schemes are developed. Lastly, the book's rich implications provide guidance on the design of future USN localization schemes. The results in this book reveal from a system perspective that underwater localization accuracy is closely related to the communication protocol and optimization estimator. Researchers, scientists and engineers in the field of USNs can benefit greatly from this book, which provides a wealth of information, useful methods and practical algorithms to help understand and explore the ocean.

Ocean covers 70.8% of the Earth's surface, and it plays an important role in supporting all life on Earth. Nonetheless, more than 80% of the ocean's volume remains unmapped, unobserved and unexplored. In this regard, Underwater Sensor Networks (USNs), which offer ubiquitous computation, efficient communication and reliable control, are emerging as a promising solution to understand and explore the ocean. In order to support the application of USNs, accurate position information from sensor nodes is required to correctly analyze and interpret the data sampled. However, the openness and weak communication characteristics of USNs make underwater localization much more challenging in comparison to terrestrial sensor networks. In this book, we focus on the localization problem in USNs, taking into account the unique characteristics of the underwater environment. This problem is of considerable importance, since fundamental guidance on the design and analysis of USN localization is very limited at present. To this end, we first introduce the network architecture of USNs and briefly review previous approaches to the localization of USNs. Then, the asynchronous clock, node mobility, stratification effect, privacy preserving and attack detection are considered respectively and corresponding localization schemes are developed. Lastly, the book's rich implications provide guidance on the design of future USN localization schemes. The results in this book reveal from a system perspective that underwater localization accuracy is closely related to the communication protocol and optimization estimator. Researchers, scientists and engineers in the field of USNs can benefit greatly from this book, which provides a wealth of information, useful methods and practical algorithms to help understand and explore the ocean.

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are emerging as a promising solution to help us explore and understand the ocean. The global market for AUVs is predicted to grow from 638 million dollars in 2020 to 1,638 million dollars by 2025 - a compound annual growth rate of 20.8 percent. To make AUVs suitable for a wider range of application-specific missions, it is necessary to deploy multiple AUVs to cooperatively perform the localization, tracking and formation tasks. However, weak underwater acoustic communication and the model uncertainty of AUVs make achieving this challenging. This book presents cutting-edge results regarding localization, tracking and formation for AUVs, highlighting the latest research on commonly encountered AUV systems. It also showcases several joint localization and tracking solutions for AUVs. Lastly, it discusses future research directions and provides guidance on the design of future localization, tracking and formation schemes for AUVs. Representing a substantial contribution to nonlinear system theory, robotic control theory, and underwater acoustic communication system, this book will appeal to university researchers, scientists, engineers, and graduate students in control theory and control engineering who wish to learn about the core principles, methods, algorithms, and applications of AUVs. Moreover, the practical localization, tracking and formation schemes presented provide guidance on exploring the ocean. The book is intended for those with an understanding of nonlinear system theory, robotic control theory, and underwater acoustic communication systems.