Marsupial robotic system enables environmental monitoring of rivers

Feb. 18, 2014

RIVERWATCH is a " marsupial " robotic system comprised of an autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which together provides autonomous riverine environmental monitoring. The UAV is based on the VBrain from Italian companyVirtualrobotix. It features open sourced control software and hardware and a six-rotor configuration for additional lifting capability. Its vision system features a FLIR Quark 336 thermal imaging camera, which is equipped with a 336 x 256 uncooled VOx microbolometer thermal imager with a 17 µm x 17 µm pixel size. This coordinated aerial, underwater, and surface level perception will ideally enable the autonomous gathering of robust environmental data. . >>>Read more

About the Author

James Carroll

Former VSD Editor James Carroll joined the team 2013.  Carroll covered machine vision and imaging from numerous angles, including application stories, industry news, market updates, and new products. In addition to writing and editing articles, Carroll managed the Innovators Awards program and webcasts.

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