Integrating Sensor Buoys into a Marine Robotics Algorithm Validation Testbed

Abstract

Clean water is an important and critical resource that still has minimal protection. This was demonstrated during the Gold King Mine spill on August 7, 2015. An event that released three-million gallons of toxic, acid-mine drainage into the Animas River. In response to this accident, students at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, USA developed a network of autonomous surface vehicles to monitor water quality within the local reservoirs that hold the primary potable water supply for the region. In addition to water quality monitoring, these autonomous surface vehicles are used for persistent data collection and multi-robot, cooperative algorithm testing. Static sensor buoys were recently added to this fleet to create a heterogeneous network that can provide high-resolution data collection in areas of interest. The sensor buoys were fabricated in-house, using off-the-shelf electronics and Internet of Things devices. This paper presents the design of these buoys and the data flow from the deployed nodes to cloud databases and websites that display the water quality data from these reservoirs to the public.