This client company manages a nature park boasting feats of modern-day horticulture with vertical gardens, conservatories, lakes, and greenhouses. The company nurtures greenery and flora, promoting sustainability and biodiversity within Singapore.
The company was concerned about the sedimentation build-up within two of its lakes. Because the lakes were connected to a bay area, sedimentation would naturally build up from continuous water pumping from connecting bay-to-lake inlet and outlet points.
Hovering AUV A.IKANBILIS:
Sedimentation accumulation was a major concern for the client. Excessive buildup could block water flow within the lakes, leading to pollutants, soil erosion, and reduced water quality. It was therefore crucial to compare the current lake depths with the original data values.
The challenge, however, was that their lake volume calculations were inefficient and inaccurate. The company’s conventional method involved two workers rowing a small boat across the lakes and using long ruler sticks to estimate depths in select areas. Despite this effort, the need remained to obtain a clearer profile of the lake floor to determine whether future desilting services would be required.
For this reason, the client’s contractors recommended BeeX as the best service provider for the job.
BeeX’s way of acquiring lake volumes was a major leap in improvement from the company’s manual ruler method. BeeX brought in a cutting-edge Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (HAUV) A.IKANBILIS, which was among the best underwater drones globally. A.IKANBILIS enabled top-of-the-line inspection capabilities by marrying its robust artificial intelligence and integrated sensors for objective data reporting. Then, the HAUV was lowered into the water by the BeeX team.
For this mission, the HAUV was configured to autonomously follow a lawnmower-styled flight path to ensure full coverage of the lake floor.
Then, a high frequency echosounder was mounted below the vehicle to collect data of sedimentation on the lake floor. Using the principle of echolocation, the echosounder emitted sound waves that bounced from the lake floor and back to the echosounder, translating this information to provide a 3D point cloud visualisation of the lake’s floor.
The resulting 3D visualisation generated in real-time was comprehensive, producing a colorful map of varying colors to represent varying depths and features of the lake floor. In the visualisation, violet and colors represented the deepest areas of the lake. Meanwhile, warmer colors toward red represented shallower points of the lake.
The 3D visualisation was later uploaded to Sambal Portal, BeeX’s data reporting software, where the client company could make use of in-built tools to measure features of the lake.
BeeX’s advanced HAUV technology provided an invaluable solution for the client company’s sedimentation concerns within their lakes. The shift from manual measurements to the sophisticated 3D visualizations offered by A.IKANBILIS not only enhanced the accuracy of lake depth data but also streamlined lake inspection processes, saving time and labor.
BeeX aims to continue empowering clients to make informed decisions about their assets, ensuring the safety and integrity of their operations.
