River Guardian

AS039 »

The high level of river pollution in industrial and metropolitan environments negatively impacts the ecosystem and raises the government's cost of maintenance and cleaning of those areas. A significant number of rivers, though, are never or rarely cleaned since there is not enough data about their pollution level, nor where the garbage foci are. Hence, a significant portion of all the river waste worldwide is never discovered. It remains unattended, increasing environmental degradation and furthering the impunity of bad actors that pollute rivers without having their actions put to judgment.

We propose a river waste monitoring system composed of an UAV equipped with an image capturing and processing device based on a FPGA. The proposed system also includes support stations with solar panels that will send the collected data to a cloud application while also sending data back to the UAV about its energy status.

The UAV will be capable of flying over the river waters and the riverbank in search of waste. It will also have a small compartment onboard, that will be used to collect water samples, which will then be sent back to a support station for testing.

The support stations will aid the UAVs by collecting solar energy to charge them and analyzing the water collected by the UAVs.
The cloud application will have a dashboard that will display the garbage accumulation spots on a map alongside pictures of the trash and historical data.

The FPGA is an essential part of the system because it will provide the computing power and precision needed for the obstacle and waste recognition algorithm to work in real-time while also being energy-efficient.

The project's expected outcome is to have a relatively low-cost, self-sustainable autonomous system that can be easily deployed on various rivers and efficiently map the river and riverbank area for garbage accumulation spots while also assessing the water quality. This system will provide the local government and agencies with real-time and detailed data about the river's health and waste accumulation spots. Furthermore, the data gathered will be valuable in policies and efforts to restore the river's condition and educate the local community about correct waste disposal practices and other ways of ensuring the nearby river's well-being.