WRSC 2011WRSC 2011

RoBoaTAURoBoaTAU

Group Members

• Ziv Ramati• Vova Perelman• Anthon Nepomnyashchiy• Dror Laufer• Dan Yaari• Itamar Gilad

Who we are• Small team of under-graduate students, from the

Computer Engineering, Computer Science and Math programs in Tel-Aviv University (TAU)

• First robotic sailing project in our department• Team members had no previous sailing

experience• Few team members with electronics / robotics

background• Single Semester project• making the most out of a humble budget

Design Concepts• Shore-based processing for decision-making (C++)• Simulator as a central proving ground for shore-logic

and debugging (JAVA)• Algorithm Debugging Scripts (Python)• Hardware on USV (Embedded C) – Arduino platform (ArduPilot Mega)– Xbee 2.4GHz RF modules– MediaTek GPS module, HMC6352 compass– Wind direction & speed sensors– Ultrasonic sensors for collision avoidance– Accelerometer for tilt sensing (not used)

Design Concepts

Work progress

• Software –– Design & implementation started early– Lots of work on adapting the ‘TrackSail’ simulator– Team work (Google-Groups, Web-Site, SVN…)– Navigation algorithms tested: Cone, RRT, H-Graph,

Potential Field, etc.

• Boat –– Finding a boat available to Israel was hard– Shipping took longer than we hoped

Final Algorithm

Work progress

• Hardware –– Performed requirement analysis– Purchased hardware– Waited…– Integration and (wet!) field experiments– Problems…• The real world is different!• Sometimes, you really need a USB dongle…

Conclusions / Current Status

• Performance in simulator is fairly good (navigation, station holding and collision avoidance work)

• Real world sailing performance still lacking but improving.

Thank you for listening