Celestial Navigation: A State-of-the-Art Review Towards a Light Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (LAUV) Conceptual Application
Highlights Which are the main findings? A state-of-the-art review of celestial navigation technologies identifies solar-based positioning as a technically feasible and strategically relevant complement to conventional Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, providing periodic absolute position fixes to correct Inertial Navigation System/Doppler Velocity Log drift and offering a credible independent fallback navigation in Global Navigation Satellite System-denied environments. A preliminary spatial layout for incorporating Sunto’s Solar Tracking Sensor and a Tracking Control Intelligence unit into a Light Autonomous Underwater Vehicle platform is proposed. This conceptual analysis illustrates the theoretical geometric feasibility of the module, establishing a baseline for future hydrodynamic validation. What are the implications of the main findings? The proposed conceptual framework illustrates how celestial navigation can theoretically provide periodic absolute position fixes to correct Inertial Navigation System/Doppler Velocity Log drift, thus offering a credible Global Navigation Satellite System-independent fallback for long-endurance Autonomous Underwater Vehicle missions. The proposed ten-step development methodology establishes a reproducible Autonomous Underwater Vehicle platform integration framework applicable to future celestial navigation systems. Abstract Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are incompatible with the underwater domain as radiofrequency signals cannot penetrate the water column, leaving Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) reliant on dead-reckoning systems that accumulate positional errors over time. When AUVs surface to reset their navigation, they face another challenge: GNSS itself is increasingly vulnerable to jamming and spoofing in contested environments. Automated Celestial Navigation (CN) has emerged as a promising alternative to other navigation methods, making it possible to derive the absolute position from observations of celestial bodies, entirely independent of human-made signals. This work provides a state-of-the-art review of automated CN technologies, focusing on the literature from 2020 onwards. The review covers Solar Tracking Sensors (STSs), star trackers and horizon detection algorithms and assesses their suitability for AUV integration through a structured SWOT analysis. Following this, a conceptual CN system based on Sunto’s STS is developed for the Light Autonomous Underwater Vehicle platform employing a proposed ten-step integration methodology. Computer-Aided Design models illustrate the conceptual setup, though hydrodynamic/structural verification remains subject to future work. Results suggest that solar-based CN can serve as a periodic absolute position corrector within a hybrid AUV navigation architecture, without requiring satellite infrastructure, which contributes towards a more resilient AUV navigation.