Combined Acoustic and Video Characterization of Coastal Environment by means of Unmanned Surface Vehicles

The aim of this work is the exploitation of Unmanned Surface Vehicles for the characterization of the sea-bottom and near-sub-bottom environment in shallow water coastal areas, through combined acoustic and video data gathering. In particular, the paper describes the employment of a double vehicle system: i) a leading USV, equipped with an advanced mission control architecture, is in charge of executing sampling grid over the area of interest; ii) a towed trimaran like platform is equipped with video and acoustic payload coupled with a GPS device in order to collect geo-referenced data over heterogeneous environment. The main key-points of employing such a system are the total autonomy of the mission execution and the capability of operating in very shallow water areas, that are usually unaccessible for commercial vessels and boats.