A fleet of 100 floating robots took a trip down the Sacramento River on Wednesday, May 9 in a field test organized by CEE Professor Alex Bayen and his team of engineers. See Floating Sensor Network.
The smartphone-equipped floating robots demonstrated the next generation of water monitoring technology, promising to transform the way government agencies monitor one of the state’s most precious resources.
“We are putting water online,” said Bayen, who holds joint appointments in UC Berkeley’s departments of electrical engineering and computer sciences and of civil and environmental engineering. “Monitoring the state’s water supply is critical for the general public, water researchers and government agencies, which now rely upon costly fixed water sensor stations that don’t always generate sufficient data for modeling and prediction."
See Floating robots use GPS-enabled smartphones to track water flow (UC Berkeley Newscenter)
See Robots measure flow of Sacramento River (SF Chronicle)