HFIPS' water-surface cleaning USV completed its new mission in Shanghai, China helping protect the Suzhou river’s water ecological environment.

The intelligent cleaning autonomous vehicle was developed in 2018 by LIU Jinhuai and his team with Institute of Solids State Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science.

Nearly two years have passed, the vehicle completed this new mission presenting better performance with improving the level of intelligence technology then to largely reduce the labor input.

In fact, before the new mission started, the team had to face many challenges lying ahead. As the Suzhou river has a very complex channel with obstacles on the water surface.

Even worse, those tall buildings nearby, bridges, serious signal interference, and even black barriers make it extremely difficult for ships to cruise autonomously when unmanned.

The nature sets many problems for the team and they just rise above these difficulties one by one.

The team developed multi-mode fusion sensing technologies to improve the vehicle’s intelligent perception to accurately detect obstacles and identify water targets such as bridges.

To realize accurate positioning and navigation with urban’s complex signal interference, the team applied satellite, inertial and electronic compass fusion navigation as well as positioning technology to achieve that objectives.

In addition, the team induced dual operating systems of embedded and industrial control computers that have been set backed up with each other to improve the system’s reliability.

To ensure control system’s safety, the team adopted a seamlessly switched hybrid power system and a fully physically isolated multi-mode operation mode.

"Our autonomous surface vehicle could apply to different kinds of river channels which makes its application expanded to mobile monitoring of water quality, water ecological restoration and management, hydrogeological exploration and mapping, emergency rescue, security and protection of important waters, etc", elaborated YU Daoyang, the head of the research team and he also expected to promote the vehicle’s practical use to more areas of Shanghai and even to the whole country.

Actually, the autonomous surface vehicle has also worked in other rivers. As it was used to clean the water surface of the Huangpu River during the first China International Import Exposition in Shanghai.

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program, Anhui Provincial Key Research and Development Program and other projects.

Contact:

ZHOU Shu

Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (http://english.hf.cas.cn/)

Email: zhous@hfcas.ac.cn