Visual-Based Navigation of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle

This paper presents the work of a team of undergraduate and graduate students at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) who compete in the annual Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) competition held jointly by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR). The conceptual design of the vehicle, its physical realization, and the results of both preliminary testing and the final competition are presented. The initial configuration of a stereoscopic vision system and navigation algorithm is explored through testing in a controlled environment. With this approach, the vehicle is shown to be capable of navigating through various courses of colored buoys; approximately 25% of the attempts result in successful navigation of all buoy pairs while 75% of the attempts result in successful navigation of half the buoy pairs or more.