Progressive Underwater Exploration with a Corridor-Based Navigation System

The present work focuses on the exploration of underwater environments by means of autonomous submarines like AUVs using vision-based navigation. An approach called Corridor SLAM (C-SLAM) was developed for this purpose. It implements a global exploration strategy that consists of first creating a trunk corridor on the seabed and then branching as far as possible in different directions to increase the explored region. The system guarantees the safe return of the vehicle to the starting point by taking into account a metric of the corridor lengths that are related to their energy autonomy. Experimental trials in a basin with underwater scenarios demonstrated the feasibility of the approach.