Design and control of a flexible surface vehicle

The paper is aimed to design and construct a robot vehicle prototype which is suitable for water surface rescue operations such as helping the drowning people or cleaning the ocean. A characteristic of the design is the vehicle´s variable body structure controlled with switching control laws for high performance navigation. The robot vehicle is also equipped with visual servoing capability for various autonomous tasks. The project is for a two-year period. In the first stage, emphasis is on the robot´s maneuverability, robust stability, and autonomous capability. In the second stage, the project enhances the intelligence of the robot vehicle via guidance and trajectory planning in order to execute the tasks such as cruising and target tracking.