An Autonomous Sailboat for Environment Monitoring

The marine environment is constantly at risk from coastal urbanization. The deterioration of coastal and marine environments is evidenced by the decline of mangroves and the biodiversity of such environments and increasing recurrences of algal and jellyfish blooms. There is a lack of environmental data especially in developing countries such as Malaysia to determine the sustainability and impact of the current development on coastal resources. We developed an autonomous sailboat that utilizes the Internet of things technology to collect and analyze ocean water quality data for local authorities to obtain insights into the sustainable development of coastal resources. The USV is equipped with sensors, microcontrollers, and a wireless communication module based on ZigBee standards to allow sending water quality data to a gateway located at the shore. The data collected by the USV will be processed by a cloud server and visualized through user applications.