Unmanned Surface Vehicles for automatic bathymetry mapping and shores' maintenance

This work proposes the exploitation and results of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) for the bathymetric sampling application. In particular the paper reports the high-resolution data set collected during a first sampling campaign carried out in the Loano area (sited in Liguria region, Italy). The sampling campaign covered the Loano beach area which is characterized by a very shallow water area, thus making impossible the execution of the sampling operation by means of common commercial boats or vessels. Furthermore the collected data are compared with historical data sets in order to highlight the advantages provided by the exploitation of robotic technologies.