Design and Development of Low-Cost Self-Navigating Unmanned Surface Vehicle

Recent adoptions of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) call for efficient and cost-effective USV systems that are able to perform self-navigation. Successful development of a self-navigating USV depends on integration of essential features, such localization, obstacle detection and avoidance as well as navigation control techniques. This paper presents the development of a low-cost self-navigating USV by considering simplified kinematic and dynamic models. The dynamic models provide insights the actuation methods of the USV. The integration of self-navigating features to the USV prototype was evaluated through series of experiments using MATLAB/SIMULINK simulations. The experimental results are presented and discussed.