The integrated drone system for bathymetry consists of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) drone with a single or dual-frequency echo sounder. The full integration is ensured with the flight planning and control software UgCS and a special onboard software by SPH Engineering. Hydromagic, a professional hydrographic survey package by Eye4Software, is applied to data processing gathered using an echo sounder attached to the drone.

Experts from both SPH Engineering and Eye4Software worked hard to ensure compatibility of data files generated by onboard drone software with Hydromagic. NMEA 0183 with bathymetric data and SEG-Y files with full echo sounder data can be processed with Hydromagic to produce output results (depth maps, contour maps, 3D models) according to the requirements of the industry.

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“Thanks to our professional partnership with Eye4Software we can provide complete solutions and support from a single source - everything from bathymetric data collection using drones to data processing with a state-of-the-art software package. I am proud to see that our brand new drone-based solution with an integrated echo sounder for bathymetric surveys has been well-received by the market and we have already made our first product shipments to meet clients’ demands” - Alexey Dobrovolskiy, CTO of SPH Engineering, comments.

"With the improved SEG-Y import function in our Hydromagic Survey package, SPH Engineering's customers can now use our hydrographic processing software which has been in use by many USV operators for years. Combining our and SPH Engineering’s technologies, it is now even possible to survey areas even a USV can't operate" - Leon Steijger, CEO at Eye4Software B.V., adds.

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Earlier this year SPH Engineering announced the launch of a UAV drone integrated with an echo sounder, a new product for bathymetric surveys of inland and coastal waters. This method of data collection is time- & cost-efficient and suitable for mapping, measuring, and inspections, as well as environmental monitoring.

A video presentation of the bathymetric survey of a lake (near SPH’s HQ in Riga, Latvia) using a UAV drone equipped with an echo sounder.

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