Autonomous surface vehicles are characterized by a high payload capability and battery autonomy being able to perform long-range missions. When equipped with sensors, they allow for a smart and adaptative deployment in water resources for continuous monitoring. This chapter presents a real implementation of an autonomous surface vehicle prototype equipped with high-quality sensors to gather environmental data from water resources. This chapter provides an extensive definition and description of the hardware and electrical configuration as well as the software present in the vehicle, proposing an architecture that provides a framework to test and deploy new algorithms. The presence of a powerful embedded computer promotes the use of artificial intelligence algorithms and enhanced sensing techniques, increasing the scope of action of the vehicle. In this way, the vehicle can detect and locate macro-plastics using deep visual models, represent data in a continuous space domain and perform autonomous exploration and actuation, promoting methodologies such as adaptative informative path planning policies, monitoring data processing or predictive algorithms. This chapter provides experimental results to validate the capabilities of the vehicle, providing real monitoring data and example cases of artificial intelligence methodologies.