Cycle Projects

Cooperative Robotic Watercraft

Small, autonomous watercraft are an ideal approach to a number of applications in flood mitigation and response, environmental sampling, and numerous other applications. Relative to other types of vehicles, watercraft are inexpensive, simple, robust and reliable. Specifically, we are developing low cost airboats: flat-bottomed boats that use an above-water fan to propel themselves forward safely and effectively through shallow or debris-filled water. The vision is to have large numbers of very inexpensive airboats provide situational awareness and deliver critical emergency supplies to victims, as well as low cost tools for environmental protection and monitoring.

Additional Information

This project is in collaboration with the Cooperative Robot Agent Systems Laboratory of CMU, namely Paul Scerri (pscerri [AT] cs.cmu.edu), Prasanna Velagapudi (pkv [AT] cs.cmu.edu) and Christopher Tomaszewski (christomaszewski [AT] cmu.edu).

To learn more, visit the project webpage