Autonomous boat developed by IIT-M students gets 3rd price in global competition

An autonomous surface boat developed by a group of students from the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) has secured third place in the Global Njord Challenge 2023 in Norway after testing three of its abilities, including docking the vessel autonomously.

Team Aritra consists of four students from the Department of Ocean Engineering's Marine Autonomous Vessels (MAV) Laboratory and is supported by Prabhakaran Jay, and Vallabh Deogaonkar of the lab.

The competition involved testing of the autonomous surface ships in three facets like ability to autonomously navigate in a channel marked by navigational buoys, ability to dock the vessel autonomously, and ability to autonomously detect and avoid dynamic obstacles while following the rules of the waterways (also known as COLREGS).

“There exists an opportunity for Indian industry and start-ups to take this up on a commercial basis under the ‘Make in India’ program of the Government of India,” Prof V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said and encouraged students of Team Aritra to think of forming a start-up.

The students -- Mohammed Ibrahim M, Amarnath Singh, Akash Vijayakumar and Rakshin Ramesh -- were mentored by IIT-M faculty Dr Abhilash Sharma Somayajula and Prof MA Atmanand.

Njord - Autonomous Ship Challenge is a unique, international student competition in which participants are tasked with designing and building an autonomous ship. Teams are invited to bring their vessels to Trondheim’s fjord where they compete in a series of challenges and events.

“We performed as well as the other global teams and demonstrated the best performance in the ‘dynamic collision avoidance task,’ which is the hardest of the three tasks. Our performance on this task prompted the judges to engage in further discussions about the algorithms and how they might be packaged for implementation into a commercial product,” Ibrahim said.

Dr Abhilash Sharma Somayajula said the success of Team Aritra shows that IIT-M students are on par with students from global universities and that participation in such global competitions allows students to gain hands-on experience, discover their passion and develop their personality.

In the context of the safety and security of the country, such vehicles will be able to do live monitoring of coasts, especially strategic locations such as ports, harbours, and defence installations, among others, on a continuous basis, the IIT-M said, adding that these vehicles could be mounted with a suite of sensors to monitor the seas and the ocean-atmosphere to collect data autonomously.

The NJORD Autonomy Challenge's esteemed jury consisted of luminaries from prominent marine autonomy companies and marine authorities. Notable entities such as Kongsberg, Zeabuz, ABB Marine, DNV, Maritime Robotics, and NTNU professors lent their expertise to evaluate and recognize the innovations presented by the participating teams.