Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Multiple Uses Of Unmanned Surface Vehicles

By Douglas Gibson


Many of us have learned to take map programs for granted, without necessarily knowing the work that has gone into creating them. The highs and lows shown in underwater topography have been largely mapped by satellite and radar. However, a more detailed mapping of the dark places in the world is now being done with unmanned surface vehicles.

It is absolutely amazing how much of this type of work can now be done by remote control with little to know oversight. There are prototypes available to universities or governments which will perform mapping duties on their own. The parameters of the area they wish to cover are programmed, and the progress is monitored by a vehicle control station, or VCS.

Maintaining this VCS is done through an application which can be loaded onto a cell phone or any other device. The person or people conducting the study track the progress of their project in real time, day and night, and can continue to do so as long as the batteries last. Not only can they keep tabs of the progress as well as battery life, but they know if the vehicle runs into any snags as well.

Mapping underwater regions is a science known as bathymetry. It used to be a laborious process requiring boats fitted with sonar and radar equipment to sweep the ocean floor or lake bed in a back-and-forth motion, much like vacuuming or mowing a lawn. Poor weather, changing tides, nightfall, and simply running out of gasoline in their boats were all barriers to efficient mapping.

These USVs are robotic vessels that do not require a great deal of human intervention to run. They are electric, and so also do not require gasoline to be run for days on end. They hold up very well in bad weather, and are all around a better option for this type of work than traditional manned boats.

In fact, these little remote control boats are an excellent way to measure temperature, rainfall, and wave patterns during hurricanes or monsoons. Without risking any human life, we can now get readings that would have been impossible to measure before. Because the data is being transferred via the app, data is spared even if the USV is lost.

There are many individuals in the private sector who might have use for these technologies as well. Anyone owning properties that contain small lakes or ponds know how important it is to keep a regular tab on the depth of the water body. By sweeping their ponds, they will know if there are structures or vegetation at depths that could be risky to swimmers and boats, and some will even alert them to the presence of undercurrents or dams created by animals.

Police departments are now able to use such tech in searches for people lost both in lakes and at sea. Such a vessel is able to work in darkness and cold, for periods of time much longer than human beings are able to continue a search. In fact, individuals who live on or near such bodies of water can get searches started right away, providing an efficient method of scouring the area and saving lives that might have otherwise been lost.




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