Competition results tell one part of the Team Minion story. The other part lives in peer-reviewed proceedings, technical reports, and system description papers — documents that translate field experience into reusable knowledge for the autonomous maritime community.
This page collects the team’s public academic output. It will be updated as new work is submitted and accepted.
System Description Papers
RobotX competitions require each team to submit a System Description Paper (SDP) prior to the event. These papers describe the vessel architecture, autonomy approach, and experimental results from pre-competition testing. They are reviewed by competition judges and made available to the research community.
2016 System Description Paper
“Minion II: Autonomous Surface Vessel for the 2016 Maritime RobotX Challenge”
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Team Minion — 2016
This paper describes the complete redesign of the Minion platform between 2014 and 2016, with emphasis on the modular rail mounting system, behavior tree task executive, and anti-windup controller modifications. The paper includes experimental data from on-water testing sessions conducted at ERAU’s Daytona Beach waterfront access, covering station-keeping accuracy under wind disturbance conditions.
Key sections: hardware architecture, software stack, sensor selection rationale, controller parameter derivation, and pre-competition test results.
2018 System Description Paper
“Minion III: Enhanced Perception and Acoustic Localization for Maritime Autonomy”
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Team Minion — 2018
The 2018 SDP focuses on the Minion III platform’s expanded sensor suite: 3D solid-state LIDAR integration, 360-degree surround-view camera system, and the redesigned vertical hydrophone array for three-dimensional pinger localization. The paper includes a comparative analysis of buoy detection performance between the Minion II stereo camera configuration and the Minion III surround-view system.
The acoustic localization section derived from this work was later adapted into a standalone conference paper (see below).
Conference and Journal Papers
Underwater Acoustic Localization
“Time-Difference-of-Arrival Pinger Localization Using a Compact Hydrophone Array on an Autonomous Surface Vessel”
Submitted to the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering
This paper presents the full theoretical and experimental treatment of the team’s acoustic pinger localization system. TDOA-based localization using a four-element array is developed analytically, and the resulting algorithm is validated against controlled experiments in a freshwater pool and open-ocean trials.
Performance is characterized as a function of signal-to-noise ratio, array geometry, and vessel motion during localization. The paper contributes a practical methodology for compact array acoustic localization that is directly applicable to autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) recovery and search operations.
Computer Vision for Maritime Object Detection
“Robust Buoy Detection Under Variable Illumination Using Fused Camera and LIDAR Evidence”
Presented at the OCEANS Conference
Buoy detection in open-water environments is challenging due to reflections, glare, wave motion, and the low color contrast between orange/red marker buoys and the water surface under certain lighting conditions. This paper presents a fusion architecture that combines LIDAR occupancy evidence with camera color and shape detectors to produce robust detections across a broader range of conditions than either modality alone.
False positive rates under direct solar glare were reduced by 71 percent relative to the camera-only baseline. The approach is designed for computational efficiency on embedded hardware and runs within the latency budget of a 10 Hz control loop.
Autonomous Task Sequencing
“Behavior Tree Task Executives for Maritime Autonomy: Design Patterns and Failure Recovery”
Technical report, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Department of Aerospace Engineering
This technical report documents the design patterns the team developed for behavior tree-based task execution in competitive maritime environments. Beyond the RobotX context, the patterns are general to any autonomous system that must sequence tasks, handle partial completion, and recover from unexpected failures without human intervention.
The report includes annotated behavior tree XML for each RobotX task, discussion of failure recovery strategies, and a comparison against the prior conditional-chain approach used in Minion I.
Theses and Capstone Projects
Several Team Minion members have used their participation to fulfill graduate thesis or undergraduate capstone requirements. Selected public works:
“Adaptive Station-Keeping Control for Autonomous Surface Vehicles Under Wind Disturbance” M.S. Thesis, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Develops and validates the wind feedforward control architecture introduced on Minion II, extending it with an adaptive gain scheduling scheme for varying sea states.
“Modular Payload Architecture for Rapid Sensor Reconfiguration in Maritime Robotics” Senior Capstone Project, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Documents the design and fabrication of the modular payload pod system introduced on Minion IV, including waterproof connector selection, thermal analysis of enclosed electronics, and structural analysis of the rail attachment under wave loading.
Relevant External Research
Team Minion’s work builds on a rich body of external research in maritime autonomy, ocean sensing, and autonomous systems. Key reference bodies include:
- ONR Marine Autonomy Research — the research office that co-sponsors RobotX
- MIT Marine Autonomy Laboratory — pioneering work in MOOS-IvP autonomy middleware widely used in the community
- IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering — primary peer-reviewed venue for ocean engineering and marine robotics research
- OCEANS Conference proceedings — the broadest annual gathering of the ocean technology research community
Citing Team Minion Work
Researchers interested in citing Minion system description papers or technical reports should contact the team through the ERAU RobotX program. Most documents are available on request; some are hosted in the ERAU Scholarly Commons.
For the full picture of the platform systems described in these papers, visit our boat overview — a technical reference that covers the current vessel configuration and the design decisions underlying it.
Academic engagement is a core part of what makes Team Minion more than a competition club. Learn more about the team’s broader mission at about Team Minion.