Autonomous Surveying Boat

TL;DR

This paper presents an autonomous surveying boat designed to measure water depths and dam capacity accurately and safely, addressing limitations of traditional survey methods through automation and GPS-based navigation.

Contribution

It introduces a scalable autonomous boat system that logs water depths and dam parameters, improving safety, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness over existing surveying techniques.

Findings

Successfully logs water depths along predefined paths

Calculates dam capacity and silting ratio from collected data

Utilizes GPS and magnetometer for precise navigation

Abstract

The fresh water reservoirs are one of the main power resources of Pakistan.These water reservoirs are in the form of Tarbela Dam, Mangla Dam, Bhasha Dam,and Warsak Dam. To estimate the current power capability of the Dams, the statistical information about the water in the dam has to be clear and precise. For the purpose of water management monthly or yearly survey of the dams required. One of the important parameter is to find the water level of water, which can help us in finding the pressure and flow of water in dams. The existing surveying systems have some problems, i.e., risky, errors in measurement and sometimes expensive. Our project has tried a lot to overcome these flaws and to develop more economical, safe and accurate system for finding depth values of dams and ponds. The key purpose of Our Project Autonomous Surveying Boat is to have it log water depths along a predefined set of points. The Autonomous Surveying Boat floats in water according to predefined path, getting the coordinates from GPS Sensor and direction is controlled by using Magnetometer Sensor. It stores its data on SD card as a text file for later readings. The boat can also be used to find the average capacity of the dam. The average depth is calculated from the measured depth values at different set points of the dam. The actual length of the dam is determined by the magnetometer. The numbers of surveys over the time can help us in finding the silting ratio in dams.For square dams the length and width of the dam are measured and the average depth, then using these three parameters we can estimate the average capacity of the dam.The boat is scalable for furthered modification if needed.