Development of a Low-Cost Unmanned Surface Vehicle for Water Quality Monitoring

Abstract

It is very important to monitor water quality both for human consumption and for marine animal habitat since it is also the main source of healthy foods. The common tasks of this monitoring are carried out using manned vehicles and the cost is high. Therefore, this work presents the development of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) named ALBA, from its mechanical actuator reconditioning to produce multiple maneuvers with only one propeller to the description of control architecture based on microcontrollers, inertial sensors, GPS, and a long-range communication system (LoRa). A numerical simulation of the craft dynamic model is presented and validated experimentally through ZigZag maneuvers. The results show that it is possible to build quickly low-cost USVs with good electronics and advanced algorithms to perform increasingly frequent tasks of water quality monitoring.