ETH Zurich’s Underwater Drone Maps Lake Ice From Below
Drilling holes through a frozen lake is a pretty straightforward way to measure ice thickness, but it is also slow, labor-intensive, and dangerous. That becomes a bigger problem when you need measurements across a large area to determine whether the ice can safely support people or vehicles.
A group of engineering students from ETH Zurich decided there should be a better way. Their solution is POLARIS, a 30-kilogram autonomous underwater vehicle designed to map ice thickness while cruising underneath a frozen lake. YouTube channel CPSdrone recently joined the team for a test at Theodul Lake near the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps.
Inside the submarine is an NVIDIA Jetson AGX computer handling navigation, sensor processing, and computer vision. Six thrusters provide six degrees of freedom, letting POLARIS move and rotate in any direction while maintaining its position beneath the ice. A slide-out electronics tray contains much of the hardware along...
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