MIT Building Robot Kayaks

Posted 10 Aug 2006 at 21:32 UTC by steve

According to an MIT news release, several researchers including John J. Leonard have been hard at work on a scheme to create an ultra-cheap fleet of sea-going robots made from - $500 plastic kayaks. To avoid the problem of communicating underwater, the researchers decided to stick with a surface robot and off-the-shelf kayaks proved to be an inexpensive solution. The kayaks, dubbed SCOUTs (Surface Crafts for Oceanographic and Undersea Testing), are packed with computers, propulsion and steering systems, and radio communication gear. 10 SCOUTS have been built so far and more are on the way. For more details and photos see the paper, SCOUT - A Low Cost Autonomous Surface Platform for Research in Cooperative Autonomy (PDF format). For more on the autonomous navigation system used by the SCOUTs see the MIT COLREGS-Based Naviation of Unmanned Marine Vehicles website.

Big Territory for Machines to Get Into., posted 12 Aug 2006 at 12:46 UTC by marev » (Observer)

Its a very important territry for humans/robots to conquer,nearly 70% of the whole planet earth and approx. 326 million trillion gallons of water on the earth.

That Is, posted 13 Aug 2006 at 00:24 UTC by marev » (Observer)

326,000,000,000,000,000 gallons to explore in but still concentrate on robotics for humans help on earth

Low Cost Robots, posted 15 Aug 2006 at 04:43 UTC by lynca » (Journeyer)

Keeping the cost down is of great importance ! But $500 plastic frames are not quite cheap, Kayaks in general are not the cheapest platforms, i.e. PVC or common components at Home Depot would be a lower cost frame. Other College students have also documented low cost frames at the AUVSI Underwater competition,

In terms of low cost ground robotics, UT-Austin RAS group has built a low cost platform using used parts from a RoboMow,check out the paper (with budget) RAS.ece.utexas.edu site

~Andrew Lynch

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