Underwater Navigation Device

[emoreira]

Has anyone tried building an INS-like system themselves ?

Sparkfun makes nice little "9 degrees-of-freedom" kits. I've managed to get one working on a stripped-down Raspberry Pi (ODROID-W) logging at 600 Hz currently to a SQLite database on an SD card. I figure I could log from an array of three, six or nine sensor sets and use the averaged data to compute a position. My maths isn't too good though and I have yet to see what the drift factor is like.

The ODROID-W has a built in Li-Poly battery charger and is most similar to the Raspberry Pi Zero, although a little more advanced.

I'm pretty interested in this kind of work. The best of the luck in your try. If I can be helpful in any way, you know.

 

[lmorin]

A proof of principle has been demonstrated for underwater navigation using polarized light from the sun. Numerous marine invertebrates and land insects navigate via an equivalent detection process. The expectation is that the method will be usable to 200 m depth and have an error of about 6 m/km traveled. Not bad, if it works and the human-usable device is not too expensive.

 

[tursiops]

A proof of principle has been demonstrated for underwater navigation using polarized light from the sun. Numerous marine invertebrates and land insects navigate via an equivalent detection process. The expectation is that the method will be usable to 200 m depth and have an error of about 6 m/km traveled. Not bad, if it works and the human-usable device is not too expensive.

Well, yes, octopuses for example, can't see color, but can see polarized light. But, all you get at best is the position of the sun, which does vary a bit. There is an intriguing hypothesis that early Norwegian navigators used calcite crystals to get from Norway to Greenland.

 

[Jonny Wishbone]

I bought one of these many years ago and still have it and it still works. I paid $600 for it when it was still on the market new. It works great but its a line of sight type beacon.If there are structures such as coral walls like in finger reefs or if you are on the other side of a wreck you will get a very weak signal that is a bit inconsistant. If your in low viz open water it will get you back to to the boat unit with uncanny accuracy.

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