An innovative ASV for the monitoring of anthropogenic pressure on Wetlands

This paper describes the technological development of an innovative Autonomous Surface Vehicle designed to meet the requirement of accessing the extremely shallow waters peculiar of the Wetlands. Wetlands are those geographic areas where water meets the earth and cover between 5 and 8 % of the Earth's surface. Wetlands include mangrove zones, swamps, bogs and marshes, rivers and lakes, alluvial plains and flooded forests, shallow coasts and coral reefs. In recent years, their importance is becoming more and more recognized and various international conventions, directives and projects work on the protection of these fundamental ecosystems. Wetlands are considered among the world’s most productive environments for their biological diversity. Nevertheless the number, quality and spacial resolution of surveys in these peculiar environments is reduced due to the absence of suitable tools expressly addressed to work in these areas. This reduces the possibilities of monitoring and protecting the Wetlands. In this paper the first prototype of an innovative class of reliable modular re-configurable lightweight ASVs for extremely shallow water and remote areas applications is presented. SWAMP (Shallow Water Autonomous Multipurpose Platform) is a fully electric, modular, portable, lightweight, and highly-controllable Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV). It is a catamaran equipped with azimuth pump-jet actuators, and it is characterized by small draft soft-foam, unsinkable hull structure with high modularity and a flexible hardware/software architecture. The main advantage of pumpjet motors is that they are flush with the hull, thus minimizing the risks of damages due to possible grounding. This system is used to increase the manoeuvrability in narrow spaces and to increase the special resolution also in extremely shallow waters. The introduction of a soft hull structure is suitable for working in coastal areas and in riverine environment where impacts can affect the survival of the robot. The foam of the hulls is drilled in order to make SWAMP a completely modular catamaran that is able to host various types of tools, such as intelligent systems, samplers, and sensors, together with thrusters that are, in this way, protected by the foam. A preliminary study is shown related to the bathymetry carried on with a single beam sonar in a Ligurian river after a series of floods. Liguria is one of the European regions where extreme events related to anthropic changes have had the greatest number of negative effects. In this kind of areas the use of suitable robots can improve the assessment and monitoring the impact of anthropogenic pressure in wetland ecosystems.