Low-Cost, Open-Source Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (HAUV) for Marine Robotics Research based on the BlueROV2

Abstract

Vision-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (vSLAM) has significant utility as an alternative to the costly inertial and acoustic sensors that conventional Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) rely on for navigation and mapping. However, the dearth of open-source, low-cost AUV platforms available for vSLAM research necessitates significant overhead for vehicle development for any underwater vSLAM research. In order to democratize access to marine robotics research we contribute a set of open-source hardware augmentations and software packages built on top of the BlueROV2 platform to allow researchers to build a low-cost Hovering AUV to facilitate autonomous vSLAM research.