Not Just Another Toy Boat

Though it looks like a miniature yellow catamaran, a craft designed by professors and students at Rowan University is not your father's toy boat.

The wooden boat is actually a robotic flotation device with an Interactive Mobile Aqua Probing & Surveillance or IMAPS, a device that can sample water parameters for environmental research.

The motor-driven IMAPS carries instruments that can measure water's temperature; depth; and pH, dissolved oxygen, nitrite, nitrate and ammonia levels and features a camera that can show what's below the water's surface. With a laptop and Internet, a nearby or far away user can guide the IMAPS via a GPS device and an onboard camera to different parts of a water body.

This device is an improvement over typical field sampling methods, which call for scientists to move in and out of water taking samples or travel from one spot to another via boat and then return the samples to a laboratory for analysis.

---LiveScience Staff

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Credit: Craig Terry/Rowan University