Development of autonomous dredger for inland waterways and enclosed water bodies

Abstract

The conceptual layout of the proposed autonomous dredger is presented. The potential for dredging in inland water bodies - reservoirs and inland waterways – in India is five times larger than the conventional dredging (ports and channels). Unlike arine dredgers, these small dredgers cannot be directly scaled up due to restrictions imposed by transportation, environmental conditions, draft and deployment. To overcome some of the difficulties, Indian Maritime University at Visakhapatnam campus IMU[V] is working on the development of an Autonomous Dredger (AD). The design philosophy revolves around modularity, ase of transport and autonomous operation. Modularity will ensure that the dredger can be dismantled for road transport and assembled at dredge site with minimal handling machinery. AD is being designed for calm water operations with four point mooring support and meant for clay and sand removal by water jet based dredging. The autonomous operation will ensure unattended dredging operation on 24x7 basis. The AD will have an in-built bathymetric survey system that will provide pre and post dredging quantification. While deployment the overall reservoir site will be divided into small ‘cell’ of convenient size (say 100 x 100m). After deployment, the AD will survey, dredge and verify the work done autonomously within the cell. Manual intervention for operational purpose will be kept to a minimum for shifting the AD from one cell to next.