[DG] [DG11] RealVision 3D data to PC

[Dan-Erik]

I work as an environmental consultant. We take on a lot of low budget projects from customers who are not willing to do a full bathymetric survey, but want some idea of what is on the bottom of a river/lake/sea.

For example, we regularly have projects where a cable or pipe is put down on the bottom, or dug down, and the customer wants to know if there are big rocks that could cause problems or if the bottom is bedrock, and about how deep it is. Currently for such a project I would just use the Lowrance single-beam to collect a few tracks, pull those tracks into ReefMaster, export depth as point and curves, and do a bottom classification on PSV, E1, and E2 and explain what they can expect. Then add sidescan to point out any big rocks etc in the vicinity. Customers are happy enough, but I am looking to improve my work and I think offering a better idea of the whole area than just a single-beam track is an easy way to go, where the Raymarine sonars appear to be shining brightest due to the IMU you put in the transducer.

We also have projects with habitat mapping, where again we would look at depth, sidescan, and bottom classification from PSV, E1, E2. There's a lot of interpolation here, so having a wider swath of bathymetry that can give a hint of bottom roughness/smoothness would improve results. Also done in ReefMaster.

For more demanding projects we are also using a PingDSP 3DSS interferometric sidescan that collects detailed bathymetry and sidescan information from a very wide swath, which we analyze in SonarWiz. However, most of our customers are not willing to pay for this level of analysis, and it is a lot more costly. Having an intermediary step, like the RealVision, could help us catch a customer segment that would be willing to spend a bit more but not all the way to 3DSS. We also have lower frequency bottom penetrating sonar, but that one goes unused most of the time, again due to difficulties to motivate the cost.

Multibeam would be a great choice for us, because we can get both bathymetry and bottom classification (PSV, E1, E2) from a wide swath. However, it would be difficult to motivate the investment due to the restricted budget nature of most of our clients. We would have to compete with real bathymetry measurements, and there are others who are better at that who use really good stuff like Kongsberg.

Privately, outside of work, I just like collecting data and see what I can do with it. More detailed data is always better, and I would enjoy putting an RV on my Albin Vega. However, again, if I can't pull it into a laptop it takes away all the fun. Or most of the fun. I do a bit of Python programming for fun, so I could play with detailed sidescan data and do some pattern recognition for example. Or try some machine learning to identify bottom structures. Send an alert to myself "passing wreckage" or something. Probably not really useful, but I like playing with these kind of things. To do something like that, I would need to pull it out in realtime though. ReefMaster has the option to collect data in real time, so if only the connection to ReefMaster worked then I could probably figure something out.