Ronny WESSLING | Michael KONRAD
(Crazy Eye – geoinformatics and digital archaeology, Vienna, Austria)

Keywords: underwater, pile dwellings, unmanned surface vehicle, photogrammetry

Abstract:
As unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming a standard tool for archaeological aerial survey it is a logical extension to apply autonomous vehicles to underwater prospections. In this study a self-made low cost multipurpose unmanned surface vehicle (mUSV) is presented. It allows to follow a predefined path on the water surface using satellite based navigation and is therefore ideally suited for systematic surveying of submerged areas of archaeological interest. Due to the very low draught of about 0.1 m it becomes possible to survey very shallow water too. Sailing routes are automatically calculated by advanced open source software considering the desired overlap and resolution of the generated data. The mUSV is designed to carry acoustic (multi-beam sonar,side scan sonar, sub-bottom profiler, boomer, pinger), geophysical (ground penetrating radar) and photogrammetric (camera) sensors. First tests were carried out equipped with an underwater camera attached to a vertical adjustment slide to adapt to the depth of water. By recording highly overlapping images of the sea ground geo-referenced orthophotos and bathymetric data is created which can be used for the detection, mapping and monitoring of submerged archaeology. The talk will evaluate the derived data taken from pile dwelling sites at Lake Attersee, Upper Austria in terms of cost, quality and further optimization possibilities.

Relevance conference | Relevance session:
In this study low cost hardware and open source software are combined to a sophiticated device for underwater prospection

Innovation:
The potential of unmanned surface vehicles for underwater archaeology has not been explored yet. This paper analyses its application for
photogrammetric surveying in shallow environments.

References:
HENDERSON, J. et al. (2013): Mapping Submerged Archaeological Sites using Stereo-Vision Photogrammetry. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 42, 243–256.
DRAP, P. et al. (2015): The ROV 3D Project: Deep-Sea Underwater Survey Using Photogrammetry: Applications for Underwater Archaeology. Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage 8(4): 21