Charles River Analytics Develops Underwater Navigation System for US Navy

Online, October 11, 2012 (Newswire.com) - Charles River Analytics, a developer of intelligent systems solutions, is developing a system to improve high-accuracy underwater navigation for the US Navy. The system - dubbed CAMINO, or Combining Aiding Sensors with Multiple IMUs (inertial measurement units) for Navigation Optimization - is designed to provide accurate localization at low size, weight, power, and cost (SWAP-C) to meet the platform requirements of small unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). The development contract was awarded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

Mr. Ross Eaton, Senior Scientist at Charles River, explained how CAMINO could help naval operations. "Whenever the Navy requires an underwater presence near the coast, there's an increased risk of collision. Rather than risking a manned platform in crowded littoral waters, the commander could send a small UUV to do the same job. The problem is that current UUVs aren't able to navigate underwater very reliably without prohibitively expensive Inertial Navigation Systems [INS] onboard. This is where CAMINO comes in. CAMINO achieves accurate localization at much lower SWAP-C than current INSs. This accuracy can enable new types of missions for small UUVs, in an affordable package."

CAMINO achieves its performance by using a novel hierarchical particle filter to combine noisy measurements from multiple low-SWAP-C, noisy IMUs with direct observations from other sensors to generate an accurate estimate of UUV geolocation and orientation. VisionKit™, Charles River's library of computer vision components, handles the signal processing and tracking tasks in CAMINO.

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About Charles River Analytics: Since 1983, Charles River Analytics has been applying computational intelligence technologies to develop mission-relevant tools and solutions to transform our customers' data into knowledge that drives accurate assessment and robust decision-making. Charles River continues to grow its technology, customer base, and strategic alliances through research and development programs for the DoD and the Intelligence Community, addressing a broad spectrum of mission areas and functional domains, including: sensor and image processing, situation assessment and decision aiding, human systems integration, and cyber analytics. These efforts have resulted in a series of successful products that support continued growth in our core R&D contracting business, as well as the commercial sector.