A Low-Cost Autonomous Surface Vehicle for Multi-Vehicle Operations

To provide a low-cost modular easily deployable platform for advancing marine autonomy and supporting multi-vehicle missions, an Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV) called BREAM (Boat for Robotic Engineering and Applied Machine-Learning) is de veloped by Purdue University. BREAM is equipped with a Ultra Short Baseline (USBL) system for underwater localization, an acoustic modem for underwater communication, and a portable and adaptable docking station for underwater power/data transfer. This paper discusses the design, construction, control and experimental validation of the vehicle's autonomous capabilities.