About

The Ultrasound boat monitoring system is a Major Qualifying Project at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Electrical Engineering Department.

Project members include three WPI undergraduate students and two professors.

Please refer to Work list section for current progress.

Boat monitoring system

This boat monitoring system is intended for use in Venice as part of an effort to analyze the effect of boat traffic on the Venetian canals.

The Venetian government believes that boat traffic is a significant contributer to the damage of the historic Venetian canals. In order to create effective policy to protect the canals the government must look deeper into the correlation between canal wall damage and the types of boat traffic that affect it. This boat monitoring system is intended provide information related to this correlation. Currently, the system is being developed to monitor the following data.

The information collected by this device will provide a basis for a detailed analysis of the relationship between canal damage and the type and density boat traffic.

Traffic Monitor:

The boat monitoring system utilizes ultrasound technology to monitor and collect the information. The figure below shows how the system detects boat traffic and calculates the velocity and length of the boat.

The above device is currently being developed.

Environmental Information Monitor:

In the future revisions, the system will also record the wake and the force exerted on the wall with the traffic information to relate boat traffic to canal damage. The diagram below shows how this force could be recorded.

This shows the device (accelerometer or pressure sensor) which could measure the lateral force exerted on the wall when the boat is passing. This and a wake height detector may be used to measure the damage caused by traffic. This data can be recorded with the related boat traffic to relate it to canal damage.

Boat Type Recognition:

Boat type recognition can be done using various informations already collected such as boat length, speed and wake. Although the information obtained in the above section may be too minimal to be sure what the boat is. The boat recognition accuracy could be enhanced by using sound profiling. Just like different boats sound differently to human ears, this characteristic noises created by different boat types can be used to recognize boats passing by.

Recorded Data:

All the above may be recorded in a database which could be viewed in a spread sheet. A sample entree may look as shown below: