Design Philosophy-Driven Development of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Alfie

This paper discusses the development of MuddSub’s autonomous underwater vehicle, Alfie. We will compete at the 2019 International Robosub Competition. As MuddSub is a new organization, Alfie was not designed to be a robot with state-ofthe-art, groundbreaking functionality. Instead, Alfie’s main innovation is in its unique design philosophy: Simplicity, Stability, and Scalability. The principles of our design philosophy are intended to reflect the limitations that new teams face when competing at RoboSub for the first time. The design philosophy is a top-level, governing principle which dictates our competition strategy, and in turn influences our vehicle design. By introducing this philosophy in our first year of competition, we hope to contribute to the underwater robotics community in two ways. Firstly, we wish to influence pre-existing teams by demonstrating how adhering to a strict set of goals allows for a effective competition strategy and creative systems engineering, while minimizing over-engineering. Secondly, as Robosub is a ever-increasing community, we believe Alfie will be a model of an efficient and effective way to compete in a team’s first year. Finally, we hope to encourage growth in the RoboSub community, and pave the way for novel, impactful research in autonomous underwater vehicles. I. DESIGN PHILOSOPHY The conception, design, and manufacture of Alfie was guided by three interconnected principles. These three principles, in decreasing order of priority, are as follows: