Enhanced Riverine Drifter

The Navy has need of assessing the river environment including bathymetry, flow velocity profile, and navigational obstructions. While improvements in measurement fidelity and reduction in cost have come about by the use of multiple drifters, measurement quality is lost due to convergent drifter trajectories, and cost/risk remains high due to personnel effort required for deployment. An autonomous river measurement system capable of self deployment and of detecting and evading collisions with floating debris is desired. Toyon proposes to assess the feasibility of its proposed Wapter autonomous system (water-helicopter): a combination of a ducted fan hovering UAV coupled with a unique multi functional trimaran hull well-suited to stream measurement.