The North-Western Basin Branch of FSUE "Rosmorport" for the first time used an unmanned vehicle during the measurement work at the international sea terminal facility under construction to receive cruise and passenger vessels at the Kaliningrad seaport.

A hydrographic complex with a single-beam echo sounder based on the Apache-3 electric unmanned aquatic vehicle (UAV) was used to take pictures of the bottom relief.

UAV is a small-sized vessel made in the form of a trimaran, designed to perform hydrographic surveys with a single-beam echo sounder in fully automatic mode in open and closed reservoirs and coastal parts of the sea at depths from 0.3 to 250 meters, wind speeds up to 9 m/s and wave heights up to 1 meter.

The movement of the UAV is provided by two thrusters powered by a battery.

Shooting control is possible both in manual mode using a remote control, and in fully automatic mode using a pre-programmed route.

The unmanned vehicle is equipped with a rotary video camera and a radar that prevents collisions with surface objects. The installed inertial navigation system with Real Time Kinematic mode allows to accurately follow a given course even in adverse conditions of waves and wind.

The North-Western Basin Branch plans to use the UAV primarily during the construction and further operation of the international sea terminal for the reception of cruise and passenger vessels in the Kaliningrad Seaport. The use of UAV allows to significantly reduce enterprise costs due to the exclusion of the need to attract a measuring fleet and its mobilization over long distances. In addition, the use of UAV significantly improves the quality of measurement work performed in congested areas of the water area, where the use of other vessels of the measuring fleet is difficult.