AquaScan - Novel Underwater ROV for Environmental Sensing
Pioneering Subaquatic Exploration and Detection in India
Water pollution from heavy metals, corrosion, and microplastics poses serious risks to aquatic ecosystems and human health. AquaScan is an innovative underwater robotic platform mounted on an RC submarine that combines multi-modal sensing, AI-based analysis, and autonomous navigation to detect and address these threats. It uses colorimetric sensing with CNN-based analysis for heavy metal ion detection, and a custom microplastic filtration and YOLOv8 classification pipeline for differentiating plastics from organic debris. AquaScan is India’s first purpose-built ROV(for chemical analysis), capable of maintaining its position in strong currents and operating modular multi-angle manipulator arms for precise underwater sampling.
- Colorimetric sensing with AI (CNN) for heavy metal ion detection
- Microplastic filtration module with YOLOv8 classification of plastics vs organic debris
- Multi-spectrum rust and corrosion detection
- Modular sensor suite with 4K cameras, water quality analyzers, and interchangeable tools
- Pressure-resistant acrylic hull (100+m depth, upgradable to 300m)
- Open-source hardware/software design for community-driven expansion
- Developing autopositioning in high-current underwater environments
- Integrating multi-modal sensing (corrosion, microplastics, chemical profiling) into a compact ROV
- Designing manipulator arms with dexterity and robustness for subsea sampling
- Ensuring reliable filtration and classification of microplastics in real time
- Lack of commercial and institutional support for advanced underwater R&D in India
- Building cost-effective alternatives to imported ROV technologies
- Provides India’s first specialized underwater ROV for pollution and corrosion monitoring
- Empowers researchers, oil industries, and government agencies with rapid on-site water quality analysis
- Supports sustainable marine ecosystem protection through microplastic detection and remediation
- Improves safety of offshore oil infrastructure with early rust and corrosion detection
- Promotes India’s blue economy initiatives with indigenous underwater technology
- Establishes an open-source modular platform for scalable subsea robotics in India