Low-cost and robust docking angle estimation for miniature USVs through the integration of camera and multi-zone ToF sensor
Microelectronics Thrust, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China
  • Volume
  • Citation
    Huang J, Qian X, Li J, Jiang W. Low-cost and robust docking angle estimation for miniature USVs through the integration of camera and multi-zone ToF sensor. Interdiscipline 2026(1):0003, https://doi.org/10.55092/interdiscipline20260003. 
  • DOI
    10.55092/interdiscipline20260003
  • Copyright
    Copyright2026 by the authors. Published by ELSP.
Abstract

Autonomous docking of miniature unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) requires compact, low-cost, and robust sensing for estimating angles within short ranges. To fulfill these requirements, this work presents a dual-sensing strategy that combines a camera and an 8 × 8 multi-zone time-of-flight (ToF) sensor. In this strategy, the camera-based method can estimate the docking angle through calibrated AprilTag pose estimation, while the ToF-based method can derive angular information from column-wise range gradients. Experiments covering 20–80 cm and 10°–50° demonstrate that both methods can achieve reliable angle estimation, with an overall mean absolute error (MAE) of angle below 1.5°. The results further show complementary performance of the proposed design: ToF sensing is more stable at small angles while camera-based estimation performs better at larger angles. Moreover, experiments validate the robustness and practical use of the proposed system under varying illumination scenarios.

Keywords

unmanned surface vehicle (USV); low cost; angle estimation; sensor fusion; time-of-flight (ToF); camera

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