The Application and Advantages of M5000 FOG Inertial Navigation Systems in Deep-Sea Exploration

Deep sea exploration faces severe challenges such as high pressure, darkness, complex electromagnetic environments, and long endurance operations. In equipment such as unmanned deep-sea submersibles and underwater mapping platforms, high-precision and high reliability inertial navigation systems (INS) are the core to ensure the success of missions and the key technology to achieve autonomous, precise, and long-term underwater operations. Taking the M5000 pressure resistant fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) strapdown inertial navigation system produced by Micro Magic as an example, it has become the core navigation solution for deep-sea vehicles (such as AUV/ROV) with its deep-water pressure resistant design, multi-source fusion navigation capability, and high-precision sensors.

Long-Endurance AUV Autonomous Exploration and Mapping

AUVs need to conduct autonomous navigation for several hours or even days in thousands of meters deep trenches without GPS signals and with complex terrain, to perform large-scale underwater terrain mapping, resource surveys, or environmental monitoring. The system must have the ability to achieve long-term high-precision positioning, stable attitude output, and effectively integrate DVL velocity information to suppress accumulated errors in inertial navigation.

The M5000 inertial navigation system integrates ultra-low drift FOG (0.01°/h) and high-precision accelerometer (0.02m/s²), ensuring extremely high attitude and heading accuracy during long-term underwater navigation, providing a stable platform and accurate geographic reference for surveying sensors (multi beam, side scan sonar). At the same time, the M5000 deeply integrated INS/DVL, significantly improving underwater positioning accuracy. A circular probability error of 0.8% of the range means that after sailing 10 kilometers, the positioning error is only about 80 meters (CEP), which is much better than pure inertial navigation. At a depth of 3000 meters and a pressure resistance of 30 MPa, it directly meets the depth requirements of most deep-sea AUV operations without the need for additional pressure tank protection. It is equipped with a 32GB SD card that can fully record the original inertial data and navigation solution results of the entire navigation process, making it easy to replay and analyze, evaluate accuracy, and optimize algorithms after the mission.

ROV Precision Tasks and Station Keeping

ROV perform precise operations such as equipment deployment, sample collection, and structural maintenance on the seabed, requiring ultra-high instantaneous attitude measurement accuracy and stability to ensure accurate spatial positioning of robotic arm operations; At the same time, it is necessary to quickly respond to the movement of the mother ship and maintain stable hovering.

The M5000 provides near real-time precise spatial reference for ROV platforms and robotic arms with ultra-high attitude accuracy (≤0.02° RMS), which is the key to successful precision operations; 5cm or 5% surge accuracy, effectively measuring the vertical (heave) motion caused by the mother ship or ocean current, combined with high-precision attitude, assisting the ROV stability control system to achieve precise hovering and anti surge interference.

Seafloor Observatories and Landers

Observation platforms or landers that are deployed on the seabed for a long time need to monitor their own small posture changes (such as seabed geological activity, tilt caused by ocean currents), or provide accurate navigation information during deployment/retrieval.

The M5000 inertial navigation system, with ultra-high attitude accuracy and stability, can sensitively capture small attitude changes of the platform, providing important data for geophysical or environmental monitoring; At the same time, M5000, with its independently developed anti electromagnetic interference algorithm, has strong anti-interference ability, which is particularly important in deep-sea hydrothermal areas or equipment intensive platforms where strong magnetic fields may exist; Built in GNSS receiver, quickly obtains accurate position information before deployment (on the water surface) or after recovery, and provides support for dynamic alignment.

M5000 Performance Parameter Indicators

Conclusion

The M5000 FOG strapdown inertial navigation system, with its deep-sea level pressure resistance capability, FOG based high precision and stability, depth optimized INS/DVL integrated navigation performance, compact and robust design, and rich functions for deep-sea applications, provides powerful navigation, positioning, and attitude reference support for key application scenarios such as autonomous exploration of deep-sea AUV, ROV precision operations, and underwater observation platforms. It is not only the "eyes" of the submersible to perceive its own state and position in a dark and high-pressure environment, but also the "nerve center" to ensure accurate and reliable detection data and successful execution of operational tasks.

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