PropaGator

Oral Report 3Andrew Wegener

IMDL 2012

Contents

•Objective•Mechanical Design•Electrical Design•Software Design•Future Applications•Questions

Objective• PropaGator is an

intelligent autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) designed to clean up the pollution in our oceans.

• PropaGator navigates to GPS waypoints that are known to have lots of pollution between them and nets are used to remove the pollutants from the ocean.

Mechanical Design▫Custom Fiberglass

Body Trimaran Design

▫Propelled by hacked bilge pump coupled to propeller

▫Rudder attached to servo for steering

▫Pontoons for stabilization

Electrical Design

▫Custom Control Board

▫Xbee for wireless communication

▫LCD feedback▫Sensors:

Micromag 3 Maxbotix Sonars EM-408 GPS

Software Design▫GPS Waypoint Navigation

Parse GPS Data(NMEA standard) Calculate desired heading

▫PD controller Sets rudder position based on

magnetometer heading and desired heading

▫Obstacle Avoidance Uses sonar to detect if object is

near and sets actuator values acordingly to avoid the object.

Future Applications

• Add water quality sensors(temperature and PH)

• Add a leak detection sensor • Add another water/air based robot to aid

PropaGator• Modify/redesign PropaGator to use

differential steering, brushless motors, and a monohull design

Questions