Our AUV

The Amador Valley High School Robotics Club has constructed an autonomous underwater vehicle named Barracuda Mark XI for the 15th RoboSub Competition.

The internal components of Barracuda are housed within a single 6-inch (15-cm) diameter acrylic tube. The vehicle is propelled by two laterally mounted SeaBotix thrusters controlling velocity and heading, and two vertically mounted SeaBotix thrusters controlling pitch and depth. A pressure sensor, inertial measurement unit (IMU), two cameras, and a hydrophone array provide navigation and orientation data to the main computer. The main computer is a BeagleBoard, which autonomously controls the vehicle and the peripheral computers. The main computer focuses on high-level mission control and image-processing tasks, while an mbed, a flexible prototyping board for microcontrollers, provides low-level control over the thrusters and acts as a liaison with the various sensors.

This section provides a brief overview of Barracuda’s mechanical, electrical, and software systems. For in-depth coverage, please see the journal paper.