Similar to last year, ARVP will be deploying Arctos for RoboSub 2024. However, the team’s goals now include attempts at all competition tasks - adding the dropper tasks, octagon task, and pinger usage to our scope. To achieve these newfound objectives, ARVP spent the majority of the year making improvements to our sensor fusion, motion planner, mission planner, torpedo system, and claw mechanism. A small portion of the team also worked on brand new external batteries and a pinger system. Since these tasks were relatively light, a key focus was cementing testing and verification into our processes. With hundreds of hours of pool time, ARVP intends to arrive at competition entirely confident of our capabilities.

Our general competition strategy is as follows:

1. Gate: ARVP will take the coin flip to randomize Arctos’ initial heading. Then, Arctos will travel through the clockwise side of the gate, as its red coloring leads to fewer false positives. Arctos will also complete a barrel roll for maximum style points. Consequently, vision systems were improved.


2. Buoy: Arctos will rotate clockwise around the buoy in a square without facing the buoy. This allowed ARVP to reuse pre-qualification mission logic to save development time. Arctos will not use path markers. Generally speaking, ARVP would prefer to use front-facing camera data to find torpedoes, pinger signals to find the droppers, and mapping estimates to find the octagon table as Arctos moves between tasks. This required a rehaul of the motion planner.


3. Dropper: Arctos will drop two markers into the red side of the bins. The dropper subsystem was prepared for RoboSub 2023 and has since been integrated into Arctos’ software stack. End-to-end testing on the RoboSub 2023 course showed no need for additional modifications.


4. Pinger: Pingers are located at the torpedoes and the octagon sample table. If the octagon pinger is active first, Arctos will complete the octagon task and then torpedoes. If the torpedo pinger is active first, Arctos will switch the order. No backtracking will be involved to reduce drift accumulation.


5. Torpedo: Arctos will fire from 0.3 m away at the two smallest holes on the banner to gain maximum points. If this task is attempted last, Arctos will float to the surface to end the run. Firstly, Arctos’ firing mechanism was modified to eliminate jamming and increase power. Secondly, the mapping node was modified to handle multiple identical targets.


6. Octagon: Arctos will use the sample table to center itself under the octagon and surface. Then, Arctos will attempt to identify an item, pick it up with a slightly modified claw, surface, and drop the object into a bin. The process will be repeated once for each obstacle, and obstacles will always be placed in different bins to avoid overflow. If this task is attempted last, Arctos will float to the surface to end the run. The development of a Kalman filter to compensate for poor doppler velocity log readings when picking up objects is still in progress.

For a more detailed explanation of ARVP’s competition goals and task-specific strategy, please see the competition documentation linked below. RoboSub 2024 here we come!