Thursday, July 20, 2017

How We Use Unmanned Surface Vehicles

By Douglas Gibson


Anyone with a mapping program on their computer is familiar with how the contours the land are shown. These mountains and valleys are depicted in lakes as well as oceans, and many people might assume that all this was done from satellites. However, a great deal of this mapping is being done with unmanned surface vehicles.

Not only are the details of underwater topography being filled in, this work is being done remotely. These technologies are not just being used by governments, but universities and businesses make use of this for everything from topography to monitoring tagged sea animals. They have only to set the boundaries to be mapped, then watch the progress via VCS, or their vehicle control station.

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.

The process of mapping oceans or lake bottoms is known as bathymetry. Traditionally this task has been performed by manned boats using sonar equipment. It is a laborious process which requires them to comb the sea or lake bed in a vacuum-sweeper fashion, and their work is inhibited by nightfall as well as weather.

Robotic vessels have no need for gasoline, and they can perform their job without utilizing very many humans in the process. They can perform their duty much longer than human-controlled boats, and are able to perform studies that would have been impossible before. Should weather change abruptly, no people are put at risk.

These boats can be equipped for measuring temperature and rainfall, as well as wave patterns and temperature during severe storms. The study of hurricanes has been taken to a whole new level with this technology. With the data collected remotely, even if the vessel is completely lost, the data collected during the period of observation has already been delivered.

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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