Robotic Lake and River Monitoring

*加拿大拥有世界第三大可再生淡水供应。我们有多达200万个湖泊和数十万公里长的河流，覆盖了我们陆地的7.6%。水显然是加拿大最大和最宝贵的资源之一，但我们经常认为这是理所当然的。随着工业化程度的提高和气候变化的顺利进行，能够为未来保护我们的水将是至关重要的。这在很大程度上将是监测我们湖泊和河流中的污染水平和对野生动物的影响的能力。由于有如此多的水体需要监测，我们相信无人水面舰船(USV)形式的技术可能能够通过自动执行数据收集过程(例如，水样、温度测绘、海岸线图像)来提供帮助。该提案要求提供资金购买ClearPath Robotics USV，以进行机器人湖泊和河流水质监测的研究。我们的目标是支持那些致力于监测、清理和了解加拿大湖泊和河流的科学家。我们希望参与一项公民科学工作，以监测多伦多海滨，并设想一项学生倡议，定期在关键地点部署USV；数据将被地理标记，并通过可公开获得的数据库提供。

***Canada has the third largest renewable freshwater supply in the world. We have as many as 2 million lakes and hundreds of thousands of kilometres of rivers, covering about 7.6% of our land mass. Water is clearly one of Canada's largest and most precious resources, yet one that we often take for granted. With increasing industrialization and climate change well underway, it is going to be critical to be able to safeguard our water for the future. A big part of this will be the ability to monitor the levels of pollution and the impact on wildlife in our lakes and rivers. With so many waterbodies to watchdog, we believe that technology in the form of Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs) may be able to help, by automating the data collection process (e.g., water sampling, temperature mapping, shoreline imagery). This proposal requests funds to purchase a Clearpath Robotics USV to conduct research into robotic lake and river water monitoring. We aim to support the dedicated scientists who are monitoring, cleaning up, and understanding the lakes and rivers in Canada. We hope to participate in a citizen science effort to monitor the Toronto waterfront and envision a student initiative with regular deployments of the USV at key sites; data will be geotagged and provided through a publicly available database.