WRSC 2011 RoBoaTAU

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