AmphibiAR research program : Development of a mobile LiDAR-SONAR system for marine infrastructure surveillance

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The AmphibiAR research program studies the potential of an integrated LiDAR and SONAR system for port infrastructure surveillance and monitoring. 'Amphibi' refers to amphibian species capable to live on both land and water environments and 'AR' refers to the common last two letters of LiDAR and SONAR sensors, both used for 3D point cloud data acquisition. LiDAR uses light and SONAR uses sound waves to measure the distance between the sensor and the target. The integration of LiDAR, SONAR to navigation sensors on a vessel forms an artificial amphibian that can see under and above the water surface. This system will replace the traditional and high-risk method for port infrastructure inspection by professional divers. Our proposed method is rapid, cost-effective and repetitive. In this proposal, we present procedures that make sure that our system will deliver high quality and accurate data, especially in the GNSS-denied environments. The research program, being directed towards (semi-)real time and automated operations with hydrographic vessels, will eventually be applied to an automated surface vehicle (AUV) to enhance the quality of the data acquired on this type of platforms and its navigation autonomy. Université Laval with collaboration of CIDCO (a NPO in hydrographic mapping) and WSP (a hydrographic service provider), all involved in the field of inspection of port facilities and dams, both in Quebec and in Canada, aim to develop the novel high quality, autonomous, and (semi-)real time system for port infrastructure inspection. The results of this research program will revolutionize the monitoring procedure in Canadian port infrastructure and will facilitate the decision-making procedures by the port authorities for their maintenance operations.