Going to Great Depths to Map Lakebeds

Mapping the bottom of a lake is a difficult job, especially when the lake is large or the water is too murky to see through. Specialized surveying equipment can do the job, but it is often expensive and requires a crew to operate. Maker Cy Antony Ash decided to take a different approach by building an autonomous robotic boat that could navigate a lake on its own, collect depth measurements, and use that data to generate detailed maps of the lakebed. The project took two years of development, with plenty of failed experiments and redesigns along the way.

The boat is built around a custom 3D-printed hull, which Ash designed and fabricated himself. Rather than relying on a commercially available RC boat chassis, he developed modular hull sections that could be modified and reprinted as the project evolved. This approach made it relatively easy to experiment with different shapes and...

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