Intro:
Over the past 15 years I have been designing the ultimate Inland Water High Performance Survey Craft. The first few years my focus was on understanding everything there is to know about side scanning sonar as the ultimate goal was to produce sidescan mosaics for fishermen. Next was the hull design which is absolutely critical as the primary hull is essentially and extension of the transducer in order to get the best results at the highest possible speed. This was a huge challenge as anybody who has ever used sidescan sonar will tell you for best results you need to be going no more than a fast idle speed on a conventional boat. The last 10 years has been spent working on the autonomous control of the craft as it was developing. With the help of members here at ArduPilot and in particular @rmackay9 I can safely say we have a World Champion of a craft I have fondly named ‘AIMy’. ‘AIMy’ is a super light ‘kayak like’ 4.3 meter delta craft trimaran powered by a Suzuki DF6 Four Stroke Outboard capable of speeds up to 19kph and can collect up to 1,000 Acres of High Definition SideScan Mosaic data per day on as little at 13 litres of fuel even in choppy conditions.
The Product:
As mentioned, the purpose of this craft is to collect ultra high frequency side scan sonar data in order to create High Definition Fishing Charts for Inland Water anglers. Inland water fishing is a multi billion Dollar business in the USA, and fishing charts are just a small piece of that currently offering anglers basic contour data, some colour shading and low resolution satellite data only. The contour data has been sourced from government data, social sharing data and actual surveyed data ending up with a product from bad to fair due to the high interpolation values when rendering the data. ‘AIMy’ collects data with precision in every aspect of the survey offering not only very high quality contour data as a byproduct, but a sidescan mosaic that will revolutionise the sport of inland fishing forever. Proof of concept is here in South Africa and recently Europe (Romania), no self respecting angler will even dream of not having a FishTec HD Fishing Chart as part of his fishing gear. These charts are not cheap, but once an angler has used one just once, he will never want to fish without one again.
The Project:
It is time to start mapping the most popular fishing tournament lakes, rivers and reservoirs in the USA. This is a massive task and will require literally hundreds of independent part / full time survey enthusiasts i.e YOU. The data you collect is worth gold and will be yours to do with as you please. There are many aspects of this project, not just on the water data collection but craft building and distribution, GIS (map building / processing), training, servicing, advertising etc.
Partners Wanted:
Step number one is to get partners strategically positioned around the USA to start assembling the craft right there in the USA and getting them into the hands of those looking for a very lucrative starter business in the great outdoors fishing industry.
Lets hear what the ArduPilot fam has to say about this project, I look forward to reading your comments.
John Easton
FishTec
