Autonomous way-point tracking navigation of surveying surface vessel with real-time positioning system

This paper presents design and development of a long-range Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV) for surveying water resources. This surface vessel, equipped with an echo sounder, can record and report a depth measurement in realtime for water-management purpose. This surface vessel, propelled by a 25-hp outboard engine and turned by a hydraulic steering, can be operated in either remote control or autonomous control modes. In the autonomous mode, a waypoint tracking algorithm using PID controllers adjusts heading direction to follow two-waypoint bearing as well as engine speed to ease vessel turning. Both vessel heading and position, respectively measured from IMU and GPS, are feedback signals to the waypoint-tracking controller, processed with an on-board embedded computer. Nevertheless, detecting the vessel location in vast area is a difficult task, a web application combining with Google map is implemented to report a real-time position of this surface vessel. A 3G wide-area communication is employed to transfer the data through Socket. IO using UDP for fast communication.