Unmanned Surface Vehicle for Automatic Water Quality Monitoring

Abstract

This paper presents an affordable, yet efficient approach to Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) design for automated water quality monitoring. Mechanically, the USV employs a catamaran design with robust hardware components, including aluminium structural frames, PVC inflatable tubes, and waterproof enclosures for housing electronics and batteries. The water quality monitoring function is achieved through a multi-parameter sonde controlled by an onboard processing unit, enabling fully automated environmental data collection. With the capability of both GPS-guided and telemetry operation, the USV is suitable to perform various missions/tasks of vast environmental surveillance application on both static water and river setting while maintaining communication with ground control station and server via wireless RF/4G/LTE/GPRS/Wi-Fi networks.