Otters are adorable mammals that can be found throughout Norway, especially along the coast north of Central Norway. These beautiful creatures spend most of their time in water, catching and eating fish. In the Department of Engineering Cybernetics at NTNU, we also have three Fish Otters. However, they are much bigger than normal otters and run with batteries, not fish. The NTNU Fish Otter is a small, unmanned catamaran with a hull and propulsion systems delivered by the Maritime Robotics company, while NTNU develops the control system. These Otters are very helpful for the researchers at the department to conduct their work. One of the latest missions of the NTNU Fish Otters was a field test at Nyhavna, Trondheim.
Nyhavna, which means “the new harbor” in Norwegian, is a harbor in Trondheim that was an industrial area in the past but is now being renovating to become the capital of Norway’s ocean space technology. The waters around Nyhavna have become the test area for newly developed technologies in smart electric vessels.
On 17th October 2024, my colleagues and I carried out an experiment in the water area at Nyhavna. This was the last step of my PhD research that aims to develop a new protocol for collision avoidance among autonomous ships. Through this experiment, we aimed to verify the performance of the newly developed collision avoidance algorithm in real-world conditions. This algorithm proposes a method for autonomous ships to collaborate with each other to avoid collisions in a confined waterway. The algorithm was previously tested in a simulation environment and performed well. However, it could not guarantee the success of the field test. Unlike the simulation environment with controlled conditions, many unforeseen factors could affect the system in the field test. For example, complex weather conditions could reduce the performance of the control system, while an unpredictable delay in communication could harm the connection between ships. Therefore, the field test was a critical step to ensure that the newly designed algorithm can be used for autonomous ships in the future.
It was a cloudy day in Trondheim, with a fresh breeze and rain showers. The weather was not on our side, but it was expected. The field test started in the morning and lasted for 3 hours, consisting of several experiments with three Fish Otters collaborating to avoid collisions. With the help of my colleagues, the field test was successfully completed. Despite the bad weather, the NTNU Fish Otters performed very well with the new algorithm, and no collisions occurred.
Implementing the algorithm from equations on paper into a program that runs in a real-world environment requires a lot of time and effort. However, nothing can compare to the feeling researchers experience when they see their algorithm successfully working in the field test.
Figure 1. The NTNUExtended Fish Otter is chilling on a cloudy day at Nyhavna.
Figure 2. The NTNU Fish Otters during the experiment.
An article by Hoang Anh Tran.