Clearpath Robotics (Canada) Heron USV (1)

Was quote-onlySold on a get-a-quote basis in Basic and Exploration packages. Price not published.

Discontinued · unavailableVia SSH / web / bridgeROSCatamaran10 kg payloadDiscontinued

UnavailableShipping: Discontinued. No longer listed by Clearpath. Occasional used units change hands between university labs.

Remote control: Join the boat's network and drive it over ROS: publish velocity/thrust commands and subscribe to GPS/IMU topics from a laptop running ROS. A Gazebo simulator (heron_simulator) is available.

Archived product page ↗GitHub (heron) ↗

Overview

Clearpath's research surface vessel, the water-borne sibling of Husky and Jackal. It followed the company's earlier Kingfisher USV (on its website by 2011) and shipped with Linux, ROS and open-source drivers, which made it a common platform in university multi-robot and environmental-monitoring work. The old Heron product URL now redirects to Clearpath's robots page, which lists Husky, Jackal, Dingo, Ridgeback, Warthog and TurtleBot but no Heron, so it is treated as discontinued.

Specifications

Category	Swimming robots · Surface & autonomous boats
Released	2016
Availability	Discontinued · unavailable
Programmability	Open source (hardware + software)
Best for	Professionals & labs
Vision sensors	No vision sensors
Actuators	Unknown
Audio	No audio
Compute type	x86 PC (Intel / AMD)
Remote control	Via SSH / web / bridge
Size	1.35 × 0.98 × 0.32 m deployed (0.56 m wide folded), 28 kg
Propulsion	Catamaran with two anti-fouling electric thrusters
Depth rating	Surface only (120 mm draught)
Tether / comms	None, Wi-Fi, with an optional long-range wireless network station, plus a 4-channel RC transmitter
Camera	Optional Axis PTZ dome camera
Sensors	5 Hz L1 GPS, 6-DOF IMU, options include SICK LMS111 lidar, SMART7-L GPS, echosounder
Runtime	Not published (two swappable 29 Ah batteries)
Speed	3.3 kn (1.7 m/s)
Compute	Embedded Intel Atom computer running Linux + ROS
SDK	ROS (open-source drivers on GitHub), MOOS-IvP, C++