LOCALIZATION OF A SUBMERGED TOW VEHICLE (LOST)

摘要

The location of a submerged tow vehicle (LOST) system (10) provides a device for accurately determining a position of an underwater vehicle (12) towed by a surface craft (22) or aircraft, such as a helicopter. The LOST system (10) utilizes five sources of input data to compute a best estimate of the towed vehicle's (12) position. These are (1) high resolution bathymetry data in an area of the towed vehicle's transit, (2) ocean depth (14) at a position of the towed vehicle, (3) the towed vehicle's velocity over sea bottom, (4) a slant range (18) from the towed vehicle to a known reference point, and (5) a position and course of the towing vehicle (22). The LOST system (10) is comprised of a slant range updater, a maximum likelihood estimator, a constrained adaptive tracker and a slant range corrector.