Environmental monitoring of marine environments presents several challenges: the harshness of the environment, the often remote location, and most importantly, the vast area it covers. Manual operations are time consuming, often dangerous, and labor intensive. Operations from oceanographic vessels are costly and limited to open seas and generally deeper bodies of water. In addition, with lake, river, and ocean shoreline being a finite resource, waterfront property presents an ever increasing valued commodity, requiring exploration and continued monitoring of remote waterways. In order to efficiently explore and monitor currently known marine environments as well as reach and explore remote areas of interest, we present a design of an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) with the power to cover large areas, the payload capacity to carry sufficient power and sensor equipment, and enough fuel to remain on task for extended periods. An analysis of the design and a discussion on lessons learned during deployments is presented in this paper.
In 2005, MIT's Curcio al introduced their surface craft for oceanographic and undersea testing (SCOUT) @cite_13 . SCOUT is geared for oceanographic deployment based on an obstacle avoidance system working in conjunction with a remote palm device for high level mission control. Their pioneering design and build of a truly unmanned boat set the stage for a variety of expansions of their original design. For our purposes, the electric drivetrain results in an increased draft to allow clearance for the electric motor head and propeller to displace water below the stern of the kayak. As well, the mission specific sensor design and implementation offer us insight for our design to remain flexible and modular to accommodate larger and heavier instrumentation. Examples include sidescan sonar sensors and acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCP) that are becoming prolific as the devices become more affordable. The small size limiting manual operation capabilities, low operating maximum speed of 5.6 kilometers per hour, and medium operation time of eight hours between charging are shortcomings of SCOUT that we seek to improve.
@cite_13
1940215497
In order to advance research efforts in the area of cooperative autonomy, a low cost autonomous surface craft, SCOUT (Surface Craft for Oceanographic and Undersea Testing) was developed by engineers at the MIT Department of Ocean Engineering. Design objectives include simplicity, robustness, versatility and improved operational utility. Four vehicles were fabricated during the summer of 2004 and a number of field experiments have been conducted using these craft. This paper discusses the design of the SCOUT vehicle and introduces some examples of the utility of this platform as a tool for improved software development, particularly in the area of cooperative autonomy.