“Barka” of the AGH Solar Boat Team awarded during autonomous boats competition

RoboBoat brings in student teams from around the world that deal with designing autonomous robotic boats. Their constructions compete on a challenging water track. During the competition, the teams must participate in several tasks that test the functionalities of their autonomous boats, including navigation on the water track or recognition and evading obstacles.

“Barka’s” hull was designed to mimic a catamaran and was made of two parallel side hulls connected by a platform. The design ensures stability and allows the boat to reach high speeds. The hulls are made of basalt fibres, which results in an environmentally friendly, lightweight, and extremely durable construction, which was additionally equipped with a neural network-based machine vision system.

During this year’s competition, the weather was quite rough. The waves created by strong winds led to several boats sinking. Due to its sturdy construction, “Barka’s” hull did not have such problems and, as one of the first, was qualified for the finals. 

The RoboBoat 2023 competition, organised by RoboNation – AUVSI Foundation, took place between March 22 and 28, 2023 in Sarasota, Florida, USA. More than 20 teams from Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Canada, Puerto Rico, Turkey, USA, and Poland (with the additional representation of the SimLE student research club from Gdańsk University of Technology) participated in the competition.