Autonomous Aquatic Agents

Constructing a collection of autonomous agents requires the development of appropriate experimental hardware platforms. Here we describe the process of re-purposing inexpensive radio-controlled (RC) electric motorboat as autonomous surface craft. Standard electronics components are used to interface with the RC boat electronics, and the vessels are augmented with GPS, vision, and a tilt-compensated compass to provide the necessary onboard sensing capabilities to enable point-to-point and target-based control of the vehicle. A ROS-based control and sensing infrastructure is used to operate the vehicles on-board while 802.11n communication provides communication off-board. Vessels have been operated successfully in both the pool and