Contact-Aided Factor-Graph Localization for Underwater Sampling

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2608.26932v1
• Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:34:22 GMT
• Title: Contact-Aided Factor-Graph Localization for Underwater Sampling
• Abstract summary: We propose a Contact-Aided Factor-Graph localization framework that treats physical interaction as an informative geometric constraint.<n>We show that contact-induced constraints significantly reduce trajectory drift and improve object revisit accuracy.<n>Results highlight the role of embodied physical interaction as a localization primitive in perception-degraded underwater environments.
• Score: 3.884868746700691
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Accurate state estimation for autonomous underwater vehicles performing close-range seafloor sampling remains challenging. In low-altitude operation, down-looking cameras over featureless planar seabeds produce scale ambiguity, lateral degeneracy, and inconsistent feature tracking. Meanwhile, inertial-Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) fusion alone provides no mechanism for structural drift correction. We propose a Contact-Aided Factor-Graph Localization framework that treats physical interaction as an informative geometric constraint within a smoothing-based localization formulation. The method tightly fuses suction-based manipulator contact events with adaptive visual odometry, learned object detections, and on-board sensors. Visual odometry relative-pose factors and landmark bearing-range factors are uncertainty-scaled according to inlier statistics to prevent visually weak frames from destabilizing the estimator, while contact events are modeled as high-confidence factors that induce implicit loop closures without appearance-based place recognition. Furthermore, the system can fully initialize online during motion. Experimental evaluation in tanks, harbor, and simulation environments demonstrates that contact-induced constraints significantly reduce trajectory drift and improve object revisit accuracy compared to filtering-based navigation and contact-free graph formulations. These results highlight the role of embodied physical interaction as a localization primitive in perception-degraded underwater environments

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