Mapping of an Enclosed Underwater Environment by Acoustic Side-scan

This paper briefly introduces an Acoustic side-scan mapping strategy that collects the bottom information of an unknown enclosed water pond. The objective is to obtain an underwater point cloud map for the unknown enclosed water pond, and then utilize it for path planning. The environment mapping is conducted by an autonomous underwater vehicle, which equipped with acoustic transducer, performing acoustic Side-scans. Ray tracing method is used to model and simulate the sound propagation. The consequence of the mapping is a point cloud data. The point cloud data can be further processed to construct an occupancy grid map, which will contribute to the navigation of the AUV.