Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. announced development of the BREEZE10, an autonomous unmanned compact electric survey craft. Yamaha Motor has designed this new product to support sounding work such as measuring the sediment levels of dams, and will commence business rentals principally aimed at commercial surveyors in August 2016.
BREEZE10 is an electric FRP craft*1 approximately three meters in length which has been developed to enable easy mounting of measurement equipment such as narrow multi-beam sonar*two which is increasingly popular in measurement work, including domestic dam silt level measurement.
The BREEZE10 uses GNSS (a satellite positioning system) positioning data and azimuth angle data, which allows unmanned autonomous navigation and supports improvements in efficiency and labor-saving efforts for surveying the beds of bodies of water using sonar etc.
In addition, usage of the craft is expected to expand from the surveying field into surveillance and defense support in the future. A dedicated mount allows sonar's to be quickly fitted to the installation space in the center of the craft.
Operation in shallow locations is also possible due to the special-purpose hull fitted with a Yamaha Motor marine electric motor. Three operating modes which can be selected to suit the environment of the survey location: programmed auto-navigation mode, remote-controlled operation mode, and on-board joystick operation mode
A long operating time thanks to a lithium-ion battery and an on-board compact generator. (6 hours continuous)
Navigational routes can be saved which allows the exact same route to be used when resurveying. An overall length of 3.2 meters and a beam of 1.2 meter allows transportation in a suitably sized mini-van.