The robotic competition offers a platform to determine the selection of an efficient system concerning the guidelines and procedures of the challenge. According to RoboNation (2014), the competitors were awarded approximately $20,000 and a WAM-V program to establish a sensory set and propulsion software effectively. In this sense, this report relies on the WAM-V podium because of its stability and capacity to acclimatize its contact senses to the movements. This research explores Task 5: Detecting and Avoiding Obstacles, to enhance the detection and avoidance of barriers while ensuring that the Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) can move past a specific obstacle and exit efficiently without any hurdles.
Developing the Platform
The proposed WAM-V program is considered a highly adaptable USV with flexible exteriors that adjust to a water surface, thus preventing abrupt changes to sensory images. For instance, when the vehicle hits a speed bump and the camera shake, the WAM-V cannot slap or destroy its payload in choppy or waked water surfaces. For ease of navigation through the obstacles, the 12-foot vessel will serve best (Marine Advanced Research, 2016). On that note, the navigation and propulsion system must maintain high flexibility to make essential turns required to avoid obstacles. Additionally, they must be agile enough to make a quick halt in the event of an approaching barrier. Moreover, they need to have the capacity of backing up effectively to facilitate accurate resetting and adjustment to route mode.
The water tends to generate waves and currents that can impact the propulsion and navigation system; hence it needs to be able to overcome such hurdles. On that note, to ensure that the WAM-V operates efficiently within its degrees of freedom, it is essential to install a motor mounting device with rotatable propellers (Pandey & Hasegawa, 2015). Steering can be well facilitated via differential thrust with the motor due to the need for quick reactions and double hull design of the system (Ash et al., 2016). This process was observed from a submission in the RobotX Competition by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
The sensory system will need to be capable of discerning proximity of objects, distinguishing objects from the waterline. This may be difficult because of the wavy nature of the water’s surface and the sensor and color determination due to the nature of the obstacle (RobotX, 2014). Notably, the obstacles’ rules and descriptions reveal that all hurdles must be approximately 40 inches above the water surface. On that note, it is necessary to place the sensor in a suitable position to facilitate 2-D mapping and scanning.
Using a Light Detection and Ranging detector, it is possible to determine the distance and direction of the object. After that, an onboard path planning software can take the information about the obstacle’s position and map a route that avoids it, as evidenced in the ERAU team. Regarding the gates, the USV must decide about the gates’ buoys’ colors to confirm which gate is the correct one. The images obtained from the process mentioned above will be processed with a histogram to determine that the correct color is observed when the task of finding a gate is at hand.
Conclusion
The report utilized Task 5 to explore the detection and avoidance of barriers while ensuring that the USV can move past a specific obstacle and exit efficiently without any hurdles. The WAM-V is loaded up with a dual rotating motor propulsion system fitted with a path planning software program to drive the navigating system. The sensory detection from the LIDAR and the color cameras, the system could determine the path planning algorithms, hence achieving the task’s objectives.
References
Ash, C. M., Bloom, N. D., Brown, J. D., Butka, A. N., Cronin, S. P., Delp, G. C., Goring, R. T., Hockley, C. J., Joswick, Z. R., Lodato, D., Middlebrooks, N. R., Mathews, B. F., Pletz, J. L., Romney, J. S., Schoener, M. A., Schultz, N. C., Thompson, A. M., Thompson, D. J., Wyble, … Currier, P. N. (2016). Design of the minion research platform for the 2016 Maritime Robotx Challenge.
Marine Advanced Research. (2016). WAM-V technology. Web.
Pandey, J., & Hasegawa, K. (2015). Study on maneuverability and control of an autonomous wave adaptive modular vessel (WAMV) for ocean observation. 2015 International Association of Institutes of Navigation World Congress (pp. 1-7). Prague: IEEE.
RoboNation. (2014). RobotX the bigger picture.
RobotX. (2014). Maritime RobotX Challenge: Preliminary RobotX tasks and rules. Web.