RAM-Boat 8 has two CMUCam3 robot cameras housed in the nose of its pressure casing; one ahead and one down. Quoting the www.cmucam.org website: "the CMUCam3 is an ARM7TDMI based fully programmable embedded computer vision sensor ... The main processor is the NXP LPC2106 connected to an Omnivision CMOS camera sensor module. Custom C code can be dveloped for the CMUCam3 using a port of the GNU toolchain along with a set of open source libraries and example programs. Executables can be flashed onto the board using the serial port with no external downloading hardware required." These robot cameras have a resolution of 344 x 287 with an onboard SDRAM card for program and image recording. They are connected via two 115kb serial ports to the NetBurner 5270 mission manager, which controls their operation, records their JPEG compressed or color tracking images, and instructs them to track objects of a specified color range.

For any leg of the competition, the leg table can request one of three camera protocols: 1) modify heading toward the red docking buoy wiht the forward camera while logging JPEG images with the down camera, 2) modify sway to move RAM-Boat 8 over the orange pipeline with the down camera while JPEG logging of the forward camera, and 3) modify speed and sway to position the vehicle over the black box whie JPEG logging on the forward camera.