Abstract-Modern AUV designs must handle submerged autonomous operation for long periods of time. The state of the art solution embedded in the HUGIN AUVs is a Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) aided Inertial Navigation System (INS) that can integrate various forms of position measurement updates. In autonomous operations, position updates are only available in limited periods of time or space, thus the core velocity aided inertial navigation system must exhibit high accuracy. However, position uncertainty of a DVL aided inertial navigation system will eventually drift off, compromising either mission operation or requirements for accurate positioning of payload data. To meet the requirements for a range of military and civilian AUV applications, the HUGIN vehicles come with a flexible and powerful set of navigation techniques. Methods for position updates include GPS surface fix, DGPS-USBL, Underwater Transponder Positioning (UTP) and bathymetric terrain navigation. Based on synthetic aperture sonar technology, a potentially revolutionary accurate velocity measurement is under development. HUGIN also comes with a navigation post-processing system (NavLab), which can be applied to increase navigational integrity and maximize position accuracy.

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During the last few years autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) technology has evolved from concept demonstrators towards commercial products. The driving forces are the move for energy exploitation towards deeper waters, naval applications and the Internet driven need for more intercontinental underwater communication cables. Other applications emerging for the future will be within environmental research and monitoring and deepwater exploration.Deepwater developments beyond the continental shelf will require the same level of survey data quality and intervention access as established for shallow water. The potential for cost savings is two folds.Firstly, there is a reduction in the survey cost it self and secondly there is a considerable cost saving by avoiding over design of subsea installations due to lack of sufficient documentation of the field. In this scenario, there is an increasing understanding that underwater robotics and in particular AUVs will play an important role in future survey and subsea engineering work.The AUV as a free swimming underwater survey sensor carrier has several advantages compared to cable controlled ROV's and deep towed systems:The paper prepared for the OCEANS'O4, Kobe, Japan will focus on the HUGIN AUV concept and field results from the North Sea and GOM.

Modern AUV designs must handle submerged autonomous operation for long periods of time. The state of the art solution embedded in the HUGIN AUVs is a Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) aided Inertial Navigation System (INS) that can integrate various forms of position measurement updates. In autonomous operations, position updates are only available in limited periods of time or space, thus the core velocity aided inertial navigation system must exhibit high accuracy However, position uncertainty of a DVL aided inertial navigation system will eventually drift off, compromising either mission operation or requirements for accurate positioning of payload data. To meet the requirements for a range of military and civilian AUV applications, the HUGIN vehicles come with a flexible and powerful set of navigation techniques. Methods for position updates include GPS surface fix, DGPS-USBL, Underwater Transponder Positioning (UTP) and bathymetric terrain navigation. Based on synthetic aperture sonar technology, a potentially revolutionary accurate velocity measurement is under development. HUGIN also comes with a navigation post-processing system (NavLab), which can be applied to increase navigational integrity and maximize position accuracy