Designing for Autonomy - Virginia Tech AutoBoat
Click here to check out their slide deck.
Webinar Description:
Date/Time: Saturday, October 3, 2026, 2:00-3:00pm EST
Virginia Tech’s AutoBoat team shared its custom, open-source autopilot and ground station designed to bring
advanced autonomy to motorboats and sailboats. By building the system from scratch, the team can pursue capabilities
such as object detection, collision avoidance, autonomous docking, COLREGs compliance, and GPS-denied navigation
while making the technology transferable to different platforms. Join our webinar to hear how Virginia Tech approached the
design, learn about its ROS-based architecture and development process, and explore the open-source code, telemetry
server, and extensive documentation the team has created to help others build on their work.
Learning Objectives:
- Learn about design of autonomy design
- Understand the software and hardware used in this implementation
- Utilize their open-source resources as desired for autonomy builds
Course Level: Introductory (100 Level) – Learner requires little to no previous knowledge of
autonomy and coding
PDHs: 0 hours
Recording: The webinar will be recorded and available for watch on this page by Monday, October 5.