High spatial resolution mapping of water quality and bathymetry with a person-deployable, low cost autonomous underwater vehicle

There is an increasing demand for environmental mapping tools that offer improved spatial and temporal resolution at a lower operating cost and improved ease-of-use than currently available technologies. Natural events or accidents in coastal and inland waters often create dynamic conditions that are missed or misrepresented by in-situ monitoring systems or sampling programs resulting in threats to the ecosystem, livestock and the public. Water quality and bathymetric mapping activities from water craft are limited in the vertical and horizontal resolution that can be achieved and require significant resources of manpower, vessels, sensors and fuel. YSI has responded with the development of the EcoMapper Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, an autonomous mapping system that improves upon AUV technology that has evolved over the past decade. The EcoMapper has been designed to operate within a near coastal and inland water environments that trades some navigational and mission capabilities of far more costly autonomous systems in order to be accessible to a wider environmental monitoring market. Trade-offs in navigational features and vehicle run-times will limit use in some applications that require 10+ hour missions, very accurate sub-surface navigation and +200´ diving depths but the lower cost system has unique features for the monitoring market such as a larger sensor payload, rapid mission planning and a small person-deployable package. The small and lightweight design allows for rapid response, deployments from shore and shallow water monitoring. The sensor package allows for a simultaneous data collection of water quality and bathymetric data providing a complete environmental mapping system.