The Otter

The Otter Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) is an easily deployable turn-key system for seabed mapping and monitoring of sheltered waters.

With a footprint of only 200 x 108 x 81.5cm and a weight of 55 kg, it is an easily deployable asset that can be transported in a van or even within normal airliners to the survey site. It can be disassembled into parts weighing less than 20 kg, a single operator can launch the Otter from a jetty, lake, riverside or beach.

The Otter’s robust catamaran design and the tightly integrated bathymetric survey sensors make this system a cost-effective turn-key solution for bathymetric surveys in sheltered waters such as small lakes, canals, rivers, ponds and harbor areas.

The Otter is controlled via a graphical user interface: Maritime Robotics’ vehicle control station (VCS) or a mobile phone app. The app provides manual joystick-like control, while VCS has several control modes, such as course and speed control, heading control, or waypoint control. For waypoint control, the operator can easily plan missions consisting of individual waypoints, or use templates for creating common patterns such as lawnmower surveys. Furthermore, live monitoring of sensor data quality parameters and visualization of actual data are provided in VCS, and sensor parameters can be adjusted in VCS as well. The Otter can carry a variety of customer defined sensors for seabed and environmental mapping. Quality control and monitoring of the sensor performance and coverage area are performed via the Vehicle Control Station (VCS).