Unmanned Surface Vehicle for Coastal and Protected Waters Applications: the Charlie Project

Abstract

A B S T R A C TThe paper deals with the design, development, test and exploitation of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) for coastal and protected waters applications, such as sampling of the sea surface microlayer and harbor survey. The unmanned catamaran Charlie, which is fully autonomous from the point of view of both power supply and computing capabilities and is supervised by a portable human operator station, is characterized by a state-of-the-art hardware, software and control architecture. A PC-compatible computing platform and a GNU/Linux-based embedded real-time system support an intelligent control architecture, while advanced modeling and identification techniques, based on on-board sensors, allow the implementation of accurate navigation, guidance and control model-based algorithms.Results of experiments carried out on motion estimation and maneuvering control in the Genoa-Prà harbor are presented and discussed as well as the vessel exploitation in scientific applications and research projects.

Local reactive obstacle avoidance approach for high-speed unmanned surface vehicle

“…USVs are characterized by small size, good hiding capability, high mobility, and low price; these vehicles can also be used in many aspects of marine applications, such as oceanography, environmental monitoring, surveying, mapping and navigation, as well as communication support for unmanned underwater vehicles and general robotics research (Manley, 2008;Majohr and Buch, 2006;Caccia et al, 2007;Sutton et al, 2011;Corfield and Young, 2006;Motwani, 2012;Dunbabin et al, 2009;Steimle and Hall, 2006;Heidarsson and Sukhatme, 2011;Wang et al, 2009). The development of a fully autonomous system that can work under any unstructured or unpredictable environment is a challenging task that requires robust guidance and control strategies (Naeem et al, 2012).…”

An Autopilot Based on a Local Control Network Design for an Unmanned Surface Vehicle

“…Indeed they are now used for mine counter-measures (Yan et al, 2010), surveying (Majohr et al, 2000) and environmental data gathering (Caccia, 2007), to name just three.…”

Untitled

“…This approach has been adapted by other researchers becoming one of the most popular methods to collect SML samples (Caccia et al 2007;Guitart et al 2004). The physical principle of operation is similar to that of the glass plate technique, allowing the microlayer SAS to adsorb onto the drum.…”

“…The manner in which the thickness is determined is the same as that for the glass plate; the thickness is calculated from dividing a sampled volume by the surface area of the glass drum. Recently, some efforts have been put into making the drum technique more autonomous (Caccia et al 2007).…”