AUTONOMOUS / REMOTE CONTROLLED WATER RESERVOIR SURVEY

Another implementation of arduino micro-controller auto pilot is the lake surveying  ROV . The main advantage of such an implementation is that ,the greatest percentage of lake area has depths less than 1/2 meter and so it's quite impossible to measure it using conventional depth sounding techniques.

A motorized (via a Graupner outboard motor) plywood platform on 2 cylindrical  floats (catamaran style),  with just 5 cm drought fits the task ,  with plenty of electronics on board such as:

• A picaxe ESC (electronic speed control)
• A standard 4 channel r/c receiver at 35 MHZ
• An Arduino board with Em406 GPS 
• An intelligent depth sounder (with rs232 output)
• A 433MHZ 9600 baud telemetry transmitter  or an XBee pro link at 900MHZ.

      and for the monitoring station:

• A laptop that runs Winxp and Oziexplorer (my favorite mapping program)
• An underwater  camera with video link (for clearing underwater obstructions) 
• A laptop for data logging - real time position indication -video capture

Surveying ROV with Gps , Autopilot, RF data link and depth sounder

Quite a big team is required for such a project. You may need :

• a 4x4 truck
• a driver
• a diver
• a cameraman
• a computer IT expert
• an electronics engineer
• a Photographer
• a GIS expert
• a computer graphics / desktop publishing expert
• Logging , mapping , GIS , video authoring and  Desktop publishing software 
• a sponsor

But the results can  be rewarding as shown in the following images :

Survey results

Survey results