Alpha Me Completes 23.26 km of Shallow-Water Survey Lines in Three Days

Tackling a Survey Area Where Conventional Boats Struggled to Operate

Surveying shallow and obstacle-filled waters can be challenging when access, vessel size and tidal conditions all work against the survey team.

In a shallow-water area of Zhangzhou, Fujian, the survey depth ranged from just 0.5 to 5 meters. Oyster farming stakes were distributed throughout the survey area. At high tide, many of the stakes were submerged; as the tide receded, they became exposed.

The team also had a very limited working window, with only around two hours before and after high tide each day available for effective surveying.

These conditions made conventional survey boats difficult to operate and left little room for inefficient setup or repeated deployment.

The team turned to Alpha Me, a compact unmanned surface vessel designed for flexible hydrographic surveying.

One Person From Transport to Deployment

The first challenge was simply getting the survey platform to the water.

Alpha Me's compact and lightweight design allowed it to be transported in a standard car trunk and handled by a single operator.

The setup process was equally straightforward. Its depth sounder transducer uses an integrated design, reducing the need for additional installation and calibration before launch.

The battery system is also designed for practical field use, with a display showing battery level and voltage. The battery can be quickly installed and removed, making it easier to manage during field operations.

The result is a simple workflow:

Transport → Assemble → Launch → Survey

No large crew or complicated deployment equipment was required.

Planning the Survey Route Before Launch

Once the vessel was ready, the operator could create the survey route directly through the control software.

A KML boundary could be imported, or closed coordinate points could be entered manually. After setting the heading and line spacing, the system could quickly generate a lawn-mower-style survey route.

The integrated control interface also brought key functions together in one place, including:

• Survey route planning
• Parameter settings
• Vessel status monitoring
• Real-time single-beam profile display
• Forward-view camera monitoring

This allowed the operator to focus on the survey while keeping track of the vessel and incoming data.

Stable Operation in a Challenging Shallow-Water Environment

The field conditions put the vessel, communication system and data acquisition workflow to the test.

Throughout the survey, the connection remained stable, with no signal interruptions or data loss observed.

Under the test conditions of Sea State 2, waves below 0.5 m and Beaufort force 2 winds, Alpha Me operated at a speed of approximately 1.5 m/s.

A single battery supported approximately 8 km of survey lines before the low-battery warning was triggered.

The streamlined hull also helped maintain a stable attitude while navigating shallow water, allowing the single-beam system to continue collecting data throughout the operation.

23.26 km Completed in Three Days

The biggest constraint was not the survey distance. It was time.

Because the usable survey window was closely tied to the tide, the team needed to make every hour count.

By combining quick deployment, automated route planning and a single-person operating workflow, the team completed:

23.26 km of single-beam survey lines in three days.

The project demonstrated that a compact USV can provide a practical alternative when conventional survey vessels are difficult or inefficient to use.

Built for the Jobs That Are Hard to Reach

The Zhangzhou project highlights several situations where Alpha Me can be particularly useful:

Shallow water
Suitable for survey areas where larger vessels have limited access.

Obstacle-filled environments
A compact platform provides greater flexibility when navigating around fixed obstacles such as aquaculture structures.

Short survey windows
Fast deployment and simple operation help teams make better use of limited tidal windows.

Single-person operation
Transport, deployment and field operation can be handled by one person, helping reduce crew requirements and operating costs.

A Practical Tool for Specialized Water Surveys

From lakes and rivers to reservoirs and nearshore waters, many hydrographic survey projects do not require a large survey vessel—but they do require a platform that is easy to transport, quick to deploy and reliable in challenging environments.

The Zhangzhou field test showed what this approach can achieve:

One operator. Three days. 23.26 km of survey lines.

For shallow-water areas that are difficult for conventional boats to access, Alpha Me provides a compact and practical way to get the survey done.