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Talk-07: The Robonautics USSV (Unmanned Sailing Surface Vehicle): Casco Bay Field Testing
Walter Holemans, Joseph Curcio, Vincent Vandyck
Robonautics
The Robonautics Unmanned Sailing Surface Vehicle (USSV) is a compact autonomous sailing platform developed as a low-cost, rapidly deployable testbed for marine autonomy research. Built around the MOOS-IvP autonomy framework, the vessel integrates autonomous sail and rudder control, GPS, IMU, wind sensing, telemetry, and remote supervisory control within a modular architecture designed for rapid experimentation.
This presentation summarizes the design evolution of the USSV and highlights recent field testing conducted in Casco Bay, Maine. Test results include autonomous waypoint following, sailing performance under varying wind conditions, vehicle stability, communications, and operational lessons learned. The presentation will discuss both successful implementations and practical engineering challenges encountered during development, providing insights applicable to researchers developing autonomous surface vehicles using MOOS-IvP.
Categories:
- Autonomous Sailing
- USVs
- USSVs
- Commercial Marine Vehicles