Sensor data fusion in marine robotics

Sensor data fusion is an important and difficult requirement in marine robotics. This paper examines the role of sensor fusion in three different application areas: navigation of autonomous underwater vehicles, acoustic scene reconstruction, and ocean data assimilation. The research issues encountered in these problems include management of uncertainty, modeling of sensor physics, vehicle and environment dynamics, feature extraction, data association, state estimation, and sensor management, Previous research in these areas is reviewed and suggestions for future research are presented.