Towards an Open-Source Micro Robot Oceanarium: A Low-Cost, Modular, and Mobile Underwater Motion-Capture System

Abstract

Micro autonomous underwater vehicles (μAUVs) allow early-stage experimental testing even in small tanks. In contrast to large facilities, these tanks are usually not equipped with high-fidelity motion capture systems due to high cost and reduced required accuracy for proof-of-concept testing.In this work, we introduce low-cost and open-source motion capture architecture based on fiducial markers for small research tanks. We propose a highly modular approach which allows straight-forward adaptation to individual user needs. We demonstrate the performance of our architecture in two experimental setups.