Page 27: of Marine Technology Magazine (June 2019)

Ocean Surveying x 70 x 40 cm. The USV has two propellers that can produce portunity to open the vessel-mounted current measurement 80 pounds of thrust force. For navigation control, it can be market in China,” said Leon Zhang, General Manager of remotely controlled manually, or be programmed to sail auto- Nortek China.

matically by itself. The design of the vehicle can be adjusted “This USV platform was built to help users to handle mul- according to different requirements from end users. tiple tasks, and to be able to do this at a low cost. Looking “The demand for USVs is growing in China now, and China ahead to the future, we will develop an automatic and ‘intelli- is a great market in itself. With Nortek having launched the gent’, or sophisticated, system to improve the performance of

Signature VM system here already, we should grasp this op- the USV,” said Jack Hu, Technical Manager at Nortek China.

Clockwise, starting left: Nortek China USV used by China

University of Geosciences for measuring the current pro? le and the vehicle’s velocity during drifting. The image shows a deployment in the South China Sea near the city of Zhuhai.

Testing the USV’s systems in a bay near Qingdao, China. The test includes boat stability (by hauling/dragging the vehi- cle) and communication quality.

Nortek China’s USV uses the Signature VM system, which includes the Signature500 ADCP. The USV also uses the EXO system for water quality measurement and has a high-de? ni- tion camera sensor.

The survey was carried out using the Signature VM system with a Signature500 ADCP (pictured) as well as an Aqua- dopp 2 MHz ADCP. www.marinetechnologynews.com

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