Application and Field Comparison of Water Quality Monitors in Unmanned Surface Vehicle

Marine ecological monitoring is becoming more and more important. Neither manual sampling nor buoy fixed-point monitoring can meet the needs of emergency monitoring. Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) have the characteristics of flexibility and low cost, and have broad application prospect in ecological monitoring. The comparison between online water quality monitoring instruments and national standard methods under static conditions has been carried out many times, but the accuracy of monitoring data during USV movement has not been studied. The National Ocean Technology Center independently developed an USV for water quality monitoring, and compared the data of self-developed water quality monitor with those of imported instruments during the movement of USV, and analyzed the correlation of the measured data of water temperature, salinity and pH value at different moving speeds. The results show that at the speed of USV less than 4 knots, the temperature, salinity and pH values of the two instruments are similar, and the data have good correlation, so they can be used as an effective supplementary means for emergency monitoring.