Team 13: Motion Picture Marine

Surveillance Buoy Platform

"The Green Harbor Surveillance Buoy"

Sponsor Contact:

David Grober

Motion Picture Marine

Team Members:

Sarah Brand

Trong Ngyuen

Nick McGuiness

Ogyan Moore

Bryant Benter

Project Objective

Protecting harbors and seaports from acts of terrorism and other crimes is a top priority for all coastal countries. Coastal ports allow for an enormous entrance of goods into the U.S. and critical to a nation's economic growth. Maritime security is very important to established ports in wealthy nations and also to small developing countries with constant harbor traffic. A self sustaining buoy surveillance design is critical to a harbor’s defense system. Land based cameras and patrol boats can only cover a limited area and cannot provide surveillance everywhere at all times. The objective of this project is to design a Buoy-Cam platform to be anchored in a harbor or littoral setting and provide 24/7 surveillance to the United States Coast Guard and/or United States Navy. This system will increase security and decrease the required manpower and cost for monitoring a given area. The system will use the Perfect Horizon stabilization system to provide stable video despite sea conditions, wakes, and other disturbances. Our sponsor, Motion Picture Marine, will enter a new surveillance market with this security system and enlarge the market for the existing Perfect Horizon system. This will allow surveillance of areas previously left unsecured and constantnt surveillance for entire ports and coastlines. Increasing security will decrease the amount of goods smuggled into the United States and make the nation's ports of entry safer.

The Buoy-Cam

Project Background

Placing the Perfect Horizon system on a buoy that can sustain itself for two weeks would give great visual ability to track and patrol ports while not putting too high demands on harbor workers.

Harbor surveillance is both difficult and very important. To get good visibility, systems must be placed on the water which brings up the issue of energy as the most versatile surveillance platforms will be both able to be placed away from shore, and not require servicing too often.

When watching movies that are filmed on water, (river, ocean, etc.) the horizon line remains still. If the horizon line was rolling and pitching from side to side, it would be difficult to see what was happening and many people would feel sick. This creates a problem because to get the camera shots the director wants, the camera will often have to be on a boat which will be rolling and pitching. The Perfect Horizon system is the solution to this problem. The multi-axis stabilization system uses accelerometers to control the motors and dampen out the motion of the platform that the camera is on. This allows filming from a moving boat or other water platform without any motion compromising the filming. This ability to film without the platform motion effecting the shot is great, but at 30 lbs for the stabilization system alone, the system is not very versatile. A miniaturized version of the system would allow it to be used in many more situations and greatly expand the market.

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