This article describes the design and construction journey of a self-developed unmanned surface vehicle (USV). In order to increase the accessibility and lower the barrier of entry we propose a low-cost (under EUR 1000) approach to the vessel construction with great adaptability and customizability. This design prioritizes minimal power consumption as a key objective. It focuses on elucidating the intricacies of both the design and assembly processes involved in creating an economical USV. Utilizing easily accessible components, the boat outlined in this study has been already participated in the 1st Aegean Ro-boat Race 2023 competition and is tailored for entry into similar robotic competitions. Its primary functionalities encompass autonomous sea navigation coupled with sophisticated collision avoidance capabilities. Finally, we studied reinforcement learning strategies for constructing a robust intelligent controller for the task of USV navigation under disturbances and we show some preliminary simulation results we have obtained.

In this paper, we introduce a publicly available real-world dataset collected during the Aegean Ro-Boat Race 2023, which took place at the University of the Aegean in Syros, Greece. The Aegean Ro-boat Race represents an international competition at the university level, challenging teams to innovate and develop autonomous marine robotic systems capable of performing in unknown dynamic maritime environments under real-world conditions. The 2023 competition featured three primary mission tasks, each designed to test different aspects of the robotic systems: (1) High-Speed Performance for evaluating the speed and agility of the autonomous vessels, (2) Collision Avoidance for assessing the systems’ ability to detect and avoid obstacles in real-time and (3) Endurance for testing the operational longevity and efficiency of the robotic systems over extended periods. In total, seven teams registered for the competition, with five of them being from Greece and two from the countries of Portugal and Latvia. Due to several technical difficulties, three vessels were able to complete all races and data was recorded during their entire participation. The spatiotemporal data for the “Aegean Ro-boat Race” was gathered through an onboard data logging system that continuously monitored various sensors, including GPS, for all vessels during the entire competition. The dataset includes positional reports from the vessels during all three races (totaling in over 6500 records), the positions of the external track and obstacle buoys, together with a file regarding the weather conditions during the race day.