Inspired by other great autonomous marine vehicle projects around the world, we've developed the navigation system for the Hope Turtles from scratch to be fundamentally different from “drone” technology. Traditional drone technology is all about achieving great precision and control — with little thought for the ecosystems, animals, and humans in the environments where they are manufactured, navigated, and discarded. This is precisely why you won't find the word “drone” anywhere else on this site.
And it's why we call our babies “turtles”!
TurtleOS is the brains embedded in each one. Coded in MicroPython, we explored a whole range of microprocessors and settled on developing specifically for the Xiao ESP32-S3. However, we build on a hardware abstraction layer — which means you can still operate and develop TurtleOS on a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino.
TurtleOS provides not only the navigation algorithm for the deployment of a turtle in the open sea, but also the means to recover detailed sensory telemetry for testing, improvement, and tracking. That said, first and foremost TurtleOS is designed to navigate without an internet connection on the open seas. Using the simplest sensory setup — a GPS and a gyroscope — the turtle can control its sail servo to self-navigate toward a heading.
Unlike a drone, this simple system is not about precision. It's about arrival on coastal zones within a range of plus or minus 5 kilometers. Because of this, turtles can be random and powerful blessings when they arrive and are discovered by our fellow humans — but they can never be precise delivery systems or weapons.
Get going with TurtleOS
To get going with TurtleOS, you can access our code on our GitHub repository.
To make things easy, plug in your Xiao ESP32-S3, open a terminal, and run our installer script. Already flashed? Pull the latest navigation system onto your turtle at any time with the sync script — both are ready to copy in the boxes alongside.