MeCO AUV is a Medium-Cost Open-Source Autonomous Underwater Vehicle intended for use by research groups with low levels of funding and personel. MeCO is an upgrade of the LoCO platform, and can be assembled with little technical knowledge from approximately $10,000 USD worth of off-the-shelf and custom parts, and can be operated and deployed by very small teams.
Current Features
- Tethered and tetherless operation.
- Stereo camera for 3D computer vision guidance.
- NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX processor for deep learning inference.
- State estimation and visual SLAM
- Human-Robot Interaction capabilities such as diver following, gesture detection, acoustic, and light-based communication
- A Unity-based simulator for algorithm prototpying.
- Autonomous human-in-the-loop control system for paired human-robot tasks.
MeCO AUV is currently being tested and documented for a full version 1.0 release, and awaiting University clearence for release under a permissive open-source license.