Existing riverine drifters are passive devices designed to capture, store and transmit river flow and bathymetry information. Problems inherent with passively drifting devices include the inability to maintain uniform cross-stream spatial coverage and lost drifters due to unintentional grounding and entanglement with various hazards present in a typical river environment. This proposal outlines a path to explore hardware and software solutions to improve overall system performance associated with the deployment of a small swarm of intelligent 0x9D drifters. Modifications including propulsion, steering, river boundary detection and swarm navigation are presented and discussed. By leveraging this teams extensive experience with the design, fabrication and operation of remotely operated and autonomous marine vehicles, a systematic approach to evaluating all available commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software solutions is presented. Improved deployment efficiency will be gained through better spatial coverage due to an ability to rely on inter-nodal range detection and cluster navigation achieved through complex swarm behaviors as previously employed by this team on other autonomous marine platforms.
Benefit: The proposed intelligent drifter system will provide the ability for efficient and comprehensive river bathymetry and water-flow data capture while also offering future expansion through additional sensors. System performance improvements translate to lower operating costs, more reliable data capture and less exposure to environmental and other threats to the system due to prolonged deployment. Commercial potential for the proposed system ranges from DoD specific end users (Special Forces, environmental assessment) to broad environmental users including commercial, private, research, academic, and public (NOAA, others) entities. In addition to utility in river environments, a self propelled intelligent 0x9D drifter will prove useful in littoral, near-shore and offshore applications with a high potential for long-term future commercial market penetration. In addition, as the core of this product development is based on a modular design philosophy, future long-term utility may be gained through the addition of more complex sensors and alternative communications means. Further, because the operating software is based on the open source model, it is expected that numerous enhancements will become available at very low up-front cost to potential end users, further enhancing the attractiveness of the system. Intelligent mobile drifters will be capable of autonomous localization, distributed networking and long-range communications, allowing them to effectively perform advanced behavior normally associated with larger autonomous surface vehicles. These capabilities will present additional future commercial potential including applications in homeland security, harbor protection, environmental monitoring and the production of bathymetric data products. Significant benefits useful to a wide audience will be realized, including real-time monitoring, data relay, bathymetric data enhancements, and dynamic, web-based mapping resources such as Google, Garmin, and Lowrance. Intelligent drifters could be used at harbor entrances as first responders to track and report environmental and hostile threats. Using station-keeping in an intelligent, distributed network, intelligent drifters could serve as a virtual fence and provide secure perimeter observation. In summary, there are numerous applications for low-cost intelligent mobile drifters, particularly those outfitted with robust open-source software and modular payload and radio communications mechanisms.
Keywords: realtime, realtime, bathymetry, Riverine, Propulsion, Autonomous, drifter, Network, flow
