LoCO AUV for Mzansi: Building an Underwater Robot, Together

“Communities build robots and robots build communities.”

The LoCO AUV is an open-source autonomous underwater vehicle, originally designed at the University of Minnesota to be genuinely affordable and accessible. CoderLevelUp is building one in Cape Town - together, with the community.

Why an Underwater Robot?

Cape Town is a coastal city. The ocean is part of who we are. Yet marine robotics - the technology of exploring and understanding the ocean - is almost entirely out of reach for most South Africans.

The LoCO AUV is a way to change that. By building it in the open, with community members from schools, universities, makerspaces, and industry, we’re developing real skills while telling a story about what’s possible.

Who’s Building It

The community spans a wide range of people and institutions:

• :David Campey - CoderLevelUp / Afrolabs (organiser)
• Moeketsi - Engineer in Residence at Ocean Hub
• Benjamin - Virtual World Engineer at Afrolabs (led the Gazebo simulation)
• Immanuel Nanyaro - Research Assistant at UCT’s African Robotics Unit
• Dirk (P2PU), Steve (makerspace.co.za), Jordan, David Sharpe, Roger Arendse - community makers
• Yusuf Vawda - UCT engineering faculty innovation lab
• Tash - connected to the Seathebiggerpicture NGO, bringing youth from disadvantaged communities into ocean exploration
• Alexis Grosskopf - CEO, OceanHub.Africa

The physical build happens through Ocean Hub and Menzi Lab. Here’s a reel from the first build event at Menzi.

Where We Are

Milestones reached:

• ✅ Gazebo simulation complete (Oct 2024) - you can see it and move it
• ✅ Pressure vessel waterproofed and tested successfully
• ✅ Electronics integrated - Raspberry Pi responding to ROS commands, Pixhawk controlling motors
• ✅ Live camera feed from RPi camera in place
• ✅ Teleop tested - keyboard and gamepad control working in sim and in real
• ✅ Mini-LoCO 3D-printed at 1/10 scale for community promotion
• 🔄 Full motor drive integration in progress
• 🎯 Target: LoCO shell goes underwater

The Learning Pathway

LoCO AUV is part of a scaffolded learning path from beginner to advanced:

Level 1: Scratch - move a sprite underwater
Level 2: Micro:bit - land robot in sim and real
Level 3: Abstracted Python (turtle-style LoCO commands)
Level N: Native ROS - Gazebo sim → real LoCO

The Gazebo simulation means you can participate from anywhere. You don’t need to be in Cape Town to run code.

The Hackathon Connection

At the Ocean Hub Hackathon in October 2025, one of the challenges tasked teams with using LoCO sensor data to build a business case for coastal communities. A project proposing to use the LoCO AUV to monitor water conditions at offshore mussel aquaculture sites took second place - and will be prototyped. This is exactly the kind of outcome we hoped for: robotics meeting the real-world ocean economy in a way that could genuinely matter for coastal communities.

Come Build With Us

Monthly community build events are open to all. Everything you need - project docs, sim repo, build updates, and how to join - is at bit.ly/loco-za.