The EPSRC announced funding for a research project that will build an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) called Springer to monitor pollutants in coastal and inland waterways. The autonomous robot boat will be electrically powered to avoid the possibility any possibility of adding to the pollutants it's trying to measure. The twin-hulled robot will be 3m long, 1.5m wide, and equipped with sensors able to measure conductivity, temperature, turbidity, pH, dissolved oxygen, and other parameters. The robot will be built by the same researchers who developed the Hammerhead AUV which we've reported on before.