SL40 USV Conducts Underwater Topography Survey To A Navigable River Section

Survey area

The survey area is 1km away from Dongjin bridge, around 25m long and 200m wide, the water depth is majorly between 2m to 4.5m, the flow velocity is about 0.6m/s. This section is a navigable section with vessels constantly passing by. The survey area is shown below:

Pic 1-1 Satellite map of the survey area

Facility

The SL40 Autonomous Survey USV

The SL40 Autonomous Survey USV is a new generation of survey vessel integrating navigation system, GNSS Global Positioning System and highly accurate bathymetric surveying system. It has the following advantages compared with a tradition survey boat:

1. The USV can navigate autonomously with the built-in navigation module. With a light hull weight and low draft, it can survey on shoals, reef areas and other dangerous places with great flexibility, saving labor cost, improving working efficiency and personal safety.
2. In a traditional surveying mode, it’s never easy to find a suitable survey boat to work on different water environments, either on suburb rivers or on remote reservoirs. An unmanned surface vessel weighing only 30kg can be transported by a car or lifted by two people with ease, which can save lots of time and effort from boat selecting, renting and transportation.
3. The USV can navigate and survey autonomously tocomply with the survey line with high accuracy.
4. The USV can be mounted with GNSS receiver, ADCP, side scan sonar and other sensors basing on different requirementsto achieve different functions, such as bathymetric surveying and water quality monitoring.
5. The survey data can be stored on the USV during the survey process.

USV Parameter

Problems can be solved by the unmanned boat surveying system:

1. On unnavigable water areas like reservoirs andsomeinland rivers:

• The manned boat can’treach a specific survey area by sailing, which can cost lots of time and labor to transport the boat to the target spot.

2. On shoals, shallow water, and reef area:

• The manned boat can’tsail smoothly because of the deep draft.
• The manned boat is inflexible enough to collect complete data and surveyorshave to collect data
• Surveying on unclear water area manually care can post threats to personal safety.

3. On polluted water area:

• The polluted environment can be hazardous to the human body.

Application area

1. Survey of underwater topography and sections of rivers, lakes, reservoirs, etc.;
2. Reservoircapacity measurement;
3. Hydrological survey;

Positioning terminal

Mobile Station: Southern Galaxy 1

Base Station: Southern Galaxy 6

Software

Southern Freedom software, dedicated for unmanned boat operation, integrates functions including USV navigation, data collecting, storing and post-processing.

Execution

Process

1. Connect hardware of the USV and test the software.
2. Set up the base station.
3. Input coordinate parameters to the software.
4. Drive the USV to sail along the bank to specify survey area. Set up survey lines manually, upload survey lines and get the USV to start navigating and surveying automatically. Users can also measure the survey area with a drone to draw a dxf2000 map and input to the software for survey line setup.
5. Process and delete false bathymetric data.
6. Modify data thenoutput.
7. Use the Southern Cass software to generate a map.

Result

Data output

Pic 6-1 Autonomous survey lines of the USV

Pic 6-2 Southern Cass data (.dat format)

Pic 6-3 Custom data output

Topography data output

Pic 6-4 Crosspoint data comparison

Pic 6-5 1:500 topography may in 0.2 m contour

Summary

The SE40 Autonomous Survey USV complied its mission successfully in this task. It’s proved that the USV is easy to be transported, set up and operated. It can be applied to underwater topography survey and provide basic data support for river management, regulation, and silt cleaning.