Winter 2022 - Spring 2022
MARV, short for Marine Autonomous Reasearch Vehicle, is a modified personal watercraft that is used in many research projects
at Chalmers. It was of interest to know whether a robust and fast data link could be established between MARV and a computer stationed on land.
A remote control solution with real-time camera feed was implemented for MARV to demonstrate the possibilities of 5G. This was done in the scope of a bachelor's project.
From the thesis abstract:
For the last couple of years the Swedish Sea Rescue Society, in collaboration with
Chalmers University of Technology, has explored the possibility of developing an
autonomous personal watercraft which can be useful during rescue missions. The
aim of this project is to develop new software for the test platform MARV to
enable remote control via 5G. In collaboration with Ericsson, an investigation of
the 5G connection was conducted to see whether it is suitable for the application
or not. Additionally, the speed and stability of the connection was analyzed to
conclude if MARV could be controlled safely. Furthermore, the maritime
regulations of autonomous ships were examined to determine if the system would
be allowed for usage in rescue missions.
A test bed representative of MARV’s control system was constructed for this
project, to ease the development and testing of the remote control system. Tests
were carried out to verify that the remote control system worked as intended, and
showed a successful proof of concept. Research on the current state of laws
regarding autonomous and unmanned watercrafts was done mainly through
interviews with key persons in the field of expertise. The conclusion is that no
unmanned watercrafts are allowed to drive in any water in Sweden at the time of
publication.
In conclusion, the network based remote control system proved to work well, with
great potential for further development. However, since the 5G network is not
available in most parts of the Swedish coast, the system can not be used for rescue
missions before the 5G network has been properly expanded.
Basically, we modified an RC car to be controlled from an identical computer as the one installed inside MARV. Then we did all the main development of the remote control system on the car. Once we had a working system for the car,
we transfered the software to MARV and within hours the system was up and running on MARV. We were able to do the transfer this efficiently since we built the RC car's system so similar to MARV's system that all we
had to do was find and tweak a few parameters.
At the very end of the project, we teamed up with Ericsson to perform a real test of the system using 5G. The short film at the top of this article is from
the day of the real test.
This is what I did for my bachelor's project at Chalmers. I took charge of technical development during the entire project and put together most of the drivers and software to make the remote control system work. If you are interested in reading more about this project, I will redirect you to our thesis (written in Swedish) which is available on Chalmers ODR: Safe Remote Control Solution with 5G for MARV
This is by far one of the most fun projects that I have worked on. Thank you for reading!