DEVELOPING AND BUILDING A TOWCAM
12 October 2017
For a PhD project at the University of Groningen aimed at studying the macrofauna community of the seafloor we developed and built a so-called towcam. A towcam is a camera system that is dragged underwater behind a boat to collect images of the surrounding environment.
Our towcam named “Bruce” after the shark in Finding Nemo, consists of a RVS frame in which a high resolution photo camera as well as a video camera are mounted to take images of the seafloor. The video camera is connected to the base station through a 100 meter long ‘umbilical cord’ providing the operator with a live view and enabling him to control the camera with a touchscreen. Bruce can be used in up to 60 meters of water depth.
Headerpicture by Juan Cuetos