A innovative semi-immergible USV (SI-USV) drone for marine and lakes operations with instrumental telemetry and acoustic data acquisition capability

The proposed project shows the results obtained in the implementation and testing in lacustrine and marine environment of a nautical remote controlled vehicle with surface navigation and innovative features Semi-Immersible (SI-USV). This vehicle is based on a pending patent belonging to Palermo University (Patent Pending RM2012A000209 and RM2012A000209) concerning innovative semi-immersible vehicles (SI-Drone), that can be remotely controlled from the ground, air, satellite and sea also during the semi-immersible operation. The vehicle with electric power is coupled with a jet propulsion, given the low draft, makes it possible to navigate in shallow waters or coastal shipping or sandbars. The SI-Drone is hosts for the radio or satellite communication equipment, the downloading and telemetering data equipment and the power supply for the propulsion and board instrumentation. This complete system SI-Drone can be solved the typical logistic problem occurring in very shallow water contexts (such as ports, rivers, lacustrine environment and marine coastal), where the low depth of the water column (generally less than 10 mt) present several challenges, including near-field effect and operability difficulties. Then, the proposed system can be used for applications in the fields of ports, lakes monitoring, organic fish-marine, hydrography, geology / geophysics, oceanography, underwater acoustics and environmental monitoring with particular attention to climate change impact indicators. The procedures applied in the present article, as well as the main equations used, are the result of previous applications made in different technical fields that show a good replicability (1–4, 14, 18–20).