An autonomous surface vehicle for water quality monitoring

This paper describes a novel Autonomous Surface Vehicle capable of navigating throughout complex inland water storages and measuring a range of water quality properties and greenhouse gas emissions. The 16 ft long solar powered catamaran can collect this information throughout the water column whilst the vehicle is moving. A unique feature of this ASV is its integration into a storage scale floating sensor network to allow remote mission uploads, data download and adaptive sampling strategies. This paper provides an overview of the vehicle design and operation including control, laser-based obstacle avoidance, and vision-based inspection capabilities. Experimental results are shown illustrating its ability to continuously collect key water quality parameters and compliment intensive manual monitoring campaigns.

[1]  Peter I. Corke,et al.  Long-duration solar-powered wireless sensor networks , 2007, EmNets '07.

[2]  Michael Bruenig,et al.  Continous monitoring of reservoir water quality: The Wivenhoe Project , 2009 .

[3]  M. Caccia,et al.  Autonomous Surface Craft: prototypes and basic research issues , 2006, 2006 14th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation.

[4]  J.R. Moisan,et al.  Update on the development and testing of a new long duration solar powered autonomous surface vehicle , 2008, OCEANS 2008.

[5]  Gaurav S. Sukhatme,et al.  Adaptive Sampling for Estimating a Scalar Field using a Robotic Boat and a Sensor Network , 2007, Proceedings 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[6]  J. Curcio,et al.  SCOUT - a low cost autonomous surface platform for research in cooperative autonomy , 2005, Proceedings of OCEANS 2005 MTS/IEEE.

[7]  Matthew Dunbabin,et al.  Vision-based docking using an autonomous surface vehicle , 2007, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[8]  Jianhua Wang,et al.  Design of an Autonomous Surface Vehicle Used for Marine Environment Monitoring , 2009, 2009 International Conference on Advanced Computer Control.

[9]  Alexander Leonessa,et al.  Design of a small, multi-purpose, autonomous surface vessel , 2003, Oceans 2003. Celebrating the Past ... Teaming Toward the Future (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37492).

[10]  J. Gomes,et al.  Robotic ocean vehicles for marine science applications: the European ASIMOV project , 2000, OCEANS 2000 MTS/IEEE Conference and Exhibition. Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37158).

[11]  Bradley E. Bishop,et al.  Design and Control of Platoons of Cooperating Autonomous Surface Vessels * , 2004 .

[12]  B.E. Bishop,et al.  Hardware Selection and Modeling for a Small Autonomous Surface Vessel , 2006, 2006 Proceeding of the Thirty-Eighth Southeastern Symposium on System Theory.

[13]  Peter I. Corke,et al.  Data muling over underwater wireless sensor networks using an autonomous underwater vehicle , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..

[14]  A. Pascoal,et al.  Vehicle and Mission Control of the DELFIM Autonomous Surface Craft , 2006, 2006 14th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation.

[15]  M. Reyhanoglu,et al.  Tracking Control of an Underactuated Autonomous Surface Vessel Using Switched Feedback , 2006, IECON 2006 - 32nd Annual Conference on IEEE Industrial Electronics.

[16]  Justin E. Manley,et al.  Evolution of the autonomous surface craft AutoCat , 2000, OCEANS 2000 MTS/IEEE Conference and Exhibition. Conference Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37158).

[17]  K.D. von Ellenrieder,et al.  A wind and Solar-Powered Autonomous Surface Vehicle for sea surface measurements , 2008, OCEANS 2008.

[18]  Jacoby Larson,et al.  Autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance for unmanned surface vehicles , 2006, SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing.

[19]  M. Grund,et al.  Experiments in moving baseline navigation using autonomous surface craft , 2005, Proceedings of OCEANS 2005 MTS/IEEE.

[20]  T. W. Vaneck.  Fuzzy guidance controller for an autonomous boat , 1997 .