ITU Autonomous Sailboat Team Will Represent Our Country in 2022 Maritime Robotx Autonomous Challenge

ITU Autonomous Sailboat Team (ITUASTeam) became the first and only university team from Turkey to qualify for 2022 Maritime Robotx Autonomous Challenge. Our team will represent our country in the competitions that will be held at Sydney International Regatta Center on 11-17 November 2022.

ITU Autonomous Sailboat Team is among the top 9 university teams out of 23 university teams that applied from different countries and thus entitled to receive a vehicle grant.

In May 2021, the competition committee requested the university teams who will attend the challenge to prepare a preliminary report in order to have the "WAM-V 16" surface platform to be used in the competition free of charge. ITU Autonomous Sailboat Team completed all the phases successfully and entered the top 9 among 23 university teams.

In this challenge, sensor, software development, drive system design, battery and control systems of the vehicles are developed by the teams. At the same time, the competition will increase our team's knowledge and experience on autonomous surface vessels and will be an important step for the "DRAGUT-IDA" project, which is in production phase.

The captains of the team, which is preparing for the races under the supervision of Faculty of Electrical-Electronics, Department of Electrical Engineering faculty member Assoc. Prof. Dr. Derya Ahmet Kocabaş, are Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering student Levent Yaman and Department of Artificial Intelligence and Data Engineering student Gökdeniz Turan.

What is ROBOTX?

The challenge, which will be held at Sydney International Regatta Center on 11-17 November 2022, is organized by the USA-based RoboNation. The challenge carried out with vehicles called WAM-V is attended by teams from all over the world.

Challenge Tasks

The challenge contains tasks for USVs and UAVs together or only for USVs. The tasks are as follows:

• Follow the path (USV + UAV)

• Wildlife encounter and avoid (USV + UAV)

• UAV replenishment (USV + UAV)

• Entrance and exit gates

• Scan the code

• Dock and deliver