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R/V Philos - The Autonomous Boston Whaler, a.k.a., "RoboWhaler"

R/V Philos is a 7 meter Boston Whaler that has been outfitted with sensors, hardware, and electrical infrastructure to be used as a mobile marine autonomy laboratory. The vessel is primarily used in two modes, manned and unmanned. In the manned mode R/V Philos is used to collect coordinated marine perception datasets as well as marine support. In unmanned mode R/V Philos becomes 'RoboWhaler' and is used to test advanced marine perception and sensor fusion algorithms, as well as to test marine autonomy behaviors.

Size:7 meters
Sensors:GPS, IMU, 4G Broadband Radar, VLP-16 Velodyne 3D Lidar, 3 FLIR Blackfly 1.3 MP Cameras (center, left, right), 2 FLIR ADK 0.3 MP Infrared Cameras (left, right)
Supplemental Equipment:2 KW 120 VAC Inverter, 18 inch daylight display, distributed network access
Top Speed:(under autonomy) 10 meters / sec
Propulsion:Twin 250HP Mercury Marine Motors
Software:Sensor System ROS, Autonomy System MOOS-IvP
Further Info:https://oceanai.mit.edu/pavlab/docs/OCEANS21-2021157455.pdf
Datasets:https://seagrant.mit.edu/auvlab-datasets-marine-perception-1
Philos USV Photos:https://oceanai.mit.edu/media/PhilosUSV/album
Current Projects:https://oceanai.mit.edu/pavlab/proj/seebyte
Recent Events:https://oceanai.mit.edu/media/Jul2721-MIT-NeptuneTests/album

Recent Publications

2021 (2 items)

  1. Michael DeFilippo, Michael Sacarny, Paul Robinette, RoboWhaler: A Robotic Vessel for Marine Autonomy and Dataset Collection, OCEANS 2021 MTS/IEEE, October, 2021. (bibtex)
  2. Conlan Cesar, Benjamin Whetton, Michael DeFilippo, Michael Benjamin, Michael Sacarny, Scott Reed, Andrea Munafo, Coordinating Multiple Autonomies to Improve Mission Performance, OCEANS 2021 MTS/IEEE, October, 2021. (bibtex)

Other Photos

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