Mike Holden has shared his Fall 2024 sabbatical project in great details in this blog post
Excerpt from the post:
For my sabbatical leave project, I proposed to develop a small autonomous boat to measure surface sea current flow by drifting at targeted locations. I would then use the drift measurements to optimize the routing of the boat by taking advantage of the “tailwind” that a favorable current offers. The project is described in two phases: the first phase tested current measurement using an existing autonomous vessel, and at the same time used numerical simulation to test navigation algorithms. The phase one results were used to guide the second phase, which investigated a refined vessel design for the measurement task, and incorporated the best navigation scheme into the autopilot system to allow testing on the water
Thanks Mike for doing great stuff with AP and sharing!