In 2016, a group of my friends and I decided to build a completely custom AUV for research and commercial applications. We were motivated by the fact that available commercial AUVs are costly (hundreds of thousand dollars if not millions) and difficult to modify.

The goals for our new AUV, named the Beluga, are

  1. Easy to repair and customize
  2. Modular
  3. Low-cost
  4. Running the robotics operating system (ROS)

Every components of the AUV, except the sensors, are designed and manufactured by us during May 2016 to July 2016.

Takeaways:

  1. How to plan a project and execute the plan under time constraint.
  2. Do things in parallel.
  3. How to build a functional robot from scratch.

Below is a subset of photos that we took during the construction and testing process: