Milton: An open hardware underwater autonomous vehicle

Abstract

Although there are a large number of autonomous robot platforms for ground contact and flying robots, this has not been the case for underwater robotic platforms. This is not due to the lack of interesting applications in the shallow underwater domain (50m depth), but rather due to the relative cost of building such platforms. This has recently changed with the development of inexpensive thrusters and other underwater components. Leveraging these components and design principles learned from more expensive remotely operated vehicles this paper describes Milton, an inexpensive open hardware design for a traditional thruster-based underwater robot. Utilizing commercial off-the-shelf hardware and a ROS infrastructure, Milton, and Milton-inspired designs provide an inexpensive platform for autonomous underwater vehicle research.