Rover technology helps USACE keep tabs with dredging operations

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) manages hundreds of locks and dams, which are critical components of a complex navigation system that is crucial to nation’s economy and security.

Inspecting this aging aquatic infrastructure often requires costly and dangerous processes, such as deploying divers or dewatering structures, which shuts down the flow of goods and materials.

To help USACE districts perform these inspections in a safe, cost-effective manner and with higher quality, the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) is testing the use of a commercially available underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV).

“Oftentimes the environment in which we are deploying is dangerous for a diver,” said Shea Hammond, a research biologist and lead of ERDC’s underwater ROV program.

“Being a former Navy diver, former Marine Corps combat diver, I am aware of the dangers of diving. And any time you send a person into the water; there’s an inherent risk.”

With the support of ERDC’s team, deployment of the ROV allows for much safer inspection of tight, potentially dangerous areas of locks and dams without the time and great expense of shutting down the locks.

The ROV has also been deployed to document the environmental conditions in and around ongoing dredging operations.

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