DocuScooter: An innovative underwater scooter add-on for scuba diving Citizen Science

In order to obtain robust and measurable data from the marine environment, citizen science projects need user-friendly tools that, during dives, autonomously gather information in an easy, low-cost and integrated way. Data collected from different devices and by different untrained divers must have good estimation of the position where the information has been acquired. With this goal, in the context of the Green Bubbles project, a novel platform, called DocuScooter has been designed and developed. DocuScooter implements all the algorithms to filter and merge data with correct timestamp and position preparing the complete mission report. After the mission, the diver can upload the report on an appropriate web service to produce a 3D documentation. In order to obtain the underwater position during the dive, a tailored device compatible with the platform is also presented. Result of the prototype of the platform and the first results of the position estimation algorithm are presented and discussed.