SURF-COM: An Open Source Acoustic Controller for Soft Underwater Robots

Underwater untethered communication tends to require expensive, heavy, large, or complicated custom solutions. For soft underwater robots, we need a small, light, inexpensive, and reliable framework to send commands, especially when going into delicate underwater environments where a diver operator may need to keep a distance. This paper introduces SURF-COM (Simple Underwater Robotic Framework for Communication), an open-source acoustic controller for underwater robots. Made from entirely off-the-shelf components, this controller can easily be integrated into any underwater robot and was tested here on a soft vectored underwater vehicle (VUV). The controller uses basic frequencies to signal different commands for the robot, controlling its direction and speed. It has a maximum tested range (lateral distance between transmitter and receiver) of 45 m and can operate at up to 5 m in depth (distance of both transmitter and receiver from the surface of the water). It has a response time of 0.167 s. The controller is compact and packaged into a user-friendly, intuitive interface. We operated the robot, untethered, in various environments to test the robustness of the controller and analyze its performance.