IQUA Robotics: SPARUS II AUV Tackles Multimodal Mapping for Exploration and Inspection

Micro and small-sized AUVs can integrate a wide range of sensors and navigation systems, making them ideal for applications in littoral waters with to their ease of deployment and operation. However, effectively exploring, locating, and mapping survey targets often requires combining multiple sensing techniques. Additionally, close-range, high-resolution inspection—traditionally performed by a secondary vehicle like an ROV—is highly desirable.

The difficulties of conducting and repeating sea campaigns, coupled with technological advancements, have driven the development of AUVs with multimodal perception payloads and hovering capabilities, enabling simultaneous exploration, surveying, and inspection. The SPARUS II AUV from IQUA Robotics embodies these characteristics and can be equipped with a comprehensive and complementary suite of sensors, including acoustic (sidescan sonar, multibeam echosounder, or forward-looking sonar), optical, and magnetic sensors, as well as navigation systems and sensors for measuring water parameters.

Thanks to its ease of deployment and recovery, simple operation, and streamlined processing pipelines, SPARUS II can perform consecutive missions from a support vessel, enabling a rapid cycle of data collection, analysis, and planning for successive missions based on previous findings. Sensors with broader coverage, such as sidescan sonar (SSS) or multibeam echosounder (MBES), are used to explore and locate areas of interest. The ability to