Development of Spilled Oil Tracking Autonomous Buoy System

Spilled oil from stranded ship damages not only the ocean environment but also the regional economics. In order to prevent such damages from expanding, we are developing a system using autonomous buoys. When the oil spill accident happens, several buoys are dropped into the sea. While the buoys drift along with spilled oil, those send some useful data such as its location, the meteorological and oceanographic data around them, in real time. According to the effect of wind driven water currents on the free surface, the buoys tend to drift apart from spilled oil. Therefore, the buoys must have the function of detecting and tracking spilled oil. In this paper, the concept of the buoy system and the mechanism of tracking spilled oil are firstly introduced. Then, the sensors to detect spilled oil are described. Next, the numerical scheme is explained to design the buoy and verify its maneuverability. Some experiments using a buoy model were carried out to verify the maneuverability and tracking ability of this buoy. These results show that the buoy could track the target by using the developed tracking algorithm.