{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,24]],"date-time":"2026-01-24T16:03:51Z","timestamp":1769270631579,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":25,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,2]],"date-time":"2021-04-02T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1617321600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"the Marine S&amp;T Fund of Shandong Province","award":["No.2018SDKJ0211"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["No.2018SDKJ0211"]}]},{"name":"the Fundamental Research Funds for ZheJiang Provincial Colleges&amp;Universities","award":["No.2019XZZX003-07"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["No.2019XZZX003-07"]}]},{"name":"the Key Research and Development Project of Zhejiang Province","award":["No.2020C03012"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["No.2020C03012"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"the National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["No.41676089"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["No.41676089"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Docking technology for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) involves energy supply, data exchange and navigation, and plays an important role to extend the endurance of the AUVs. The navigation method used in the transition between AUV homing and docking influences subsequent tasks. How to improve the accuracy of the navigation in this stage is important. However, when using ultra-short baseline (USBL), outliers and slow localization updating rates could possibly cause localization errors. Optical navigation methods using underwater lights and cameras are easily affected by the ambient light. All these may reduce the rate of successful docking. In this paper, research on an improved localization method based on multi-sensor information fusion is carried out. To improve the localization performance of AUVs under motion mutation and light variation conditions, an improved underwater simultaneous localization and mapping algorithm based on ORB features (IU-ORBSALM) is proposed. A nonlinear optimization method is proposed to optimize the scale of monocular visual odometry in IU-ORBSLAM and the AUV pose. Localization tests and five docking missions are executed in a swimming pool. The localization results indicate that the localization accuracy and update rate are both improved. The 100% successful docking rate achieved verifies the feasibility of the proposed localization method.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s21072468","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,2]],"date-time":"2021-04-02T10:34:09Z","timestamp":1617359649000},"page":"2468","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":17,"title":["An Improved Localization Method for the Transition between Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Homing and Docking"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"21","author":[{"given":"Ri","family":"Lin","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Feng","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Advanced Technology Institute, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Dejun","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Mingwei","family":"Lin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Gengli","family":"Zhou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Canjun","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China"},{"name":"Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao 266000, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,2]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"127","DOI":"10.1016\/j.oceaneng.2015.08.029","article-title":"Autonomous underwater vehicle docking system for cabled ocean observatory network","volume":"109","author":"Li","year":"2015","journal-title":"Ocean Eng."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"Lambiotte, J.C. 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