A visually guided swimming robot

We describe recent results obtained with AQUA, a mobile robot capable of swimming, walking and amphibious operation. Designed to rely primarily on visual sensors, the AQUA robot uses vision to navigate underwater using servo-based guidance, and also to obtain high-resolution range scans of its local environment. This paper describes some of the pragmatic and logistic obstacles encountered, and provides an overview of some of the basic capabilities of the vehicle and its associated sensors. Moreover, this paper presents the first ever amphibious transition from walking to swimming.

Authors

• Gregory Dudek
• Michael Jenkin
• Chris Prahacs
• Andrew Hogue
• Junaed Sattar
• Philippe Giguère
• Andrew German
• Hui Liu
• Shane Saunderson
• Arlene Ripsman
• Saul Simhon
• Luz Abril Torres-Méndez
• Evangelos E. Milios
• Pifu Zhang
• Ioannis M. Rekleitis

Keywords

• Robot sensing systems
• Remotely operated vehicles
• Navigation
• Legged locomotion
• Computer science
• Communication system control
• Aquatic automobiles
• Robot vision systems
• Computer vision
• Marine vehicles
• Swimming Robot
• Vision Sensors
• Degrees Of Freedom
• Aquatic Environments
• Environmental Assessment
• Open Ocean
• Coral Reefs
• Inertial Measurement Unit
• Control Operations
• Markov Random Field
• Control Surface
• Barbados
• Vehicle Motion
• Manual Control
• Walking Gait
• Onboard Computer
• Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
• Water Swimming
• Unmanned Underwater Vehicles
• Visual Servoing
• Servo Control
• autonomous robot
• aquatic robot
• robotic sensing