Monitoring of coastal waves and velocities with a robotic platform

Coastal environments are complicated due to the variable hydrodynamics and diverse biogeomorphology. Experi-mental measurements of coastal waves and velocities are essential in these areas, as they suffer directly due to the impact of human activity (urbanisation, ports, industry, tourism, etc.), as well as climate change (sea level rise, storm surges, coastal river floods). Multi-scale studies are extremely beneficial for many applications, including resource management, protection, validating numerical models and conducting studies related to coastal processes and engineering coastal infrastructure. However, there is a lack of in-situ data as the conditions are dynamic and difficult. We propose a robotic platform equipped with cost-efficient sensing devices called Hydromasts to perform the in-situ data collection in the surf zone. We use an archimedean-screw-actuated mobile robot to profile the coastline wave motion with a robotic platform that can navigate from the beach to the sea with a GPS and record wave-induced pressures and flow velocities.