Peel Ports Group and ASV Global (ASV) have joined forces to develop the use of autonomous vessel technology for UK port operations.
ASV demonstrated its C-Cat-3 autonomous vessel at the Port of Liverpool's Brocklebank Dock for shallow survey operations.
Under the arrangement cemented by a memorandum of understanding, Peel Ports will allow access to its ports across the UK for further test programs, allowing ASV to benefit from its expertise in port safety and operations.
The partnership will encourage shared learning and address the challenges relating to using autonomous vessels in UK ports. It will also explore possibilities for collaborative development projects.
Meanwhile, ASV is leading a £1.2million (US$1.7 million) research project with BMT to enhance the safety and reliability of autonomous navigation.
Partially funded by Innovate UK, the project will use deep learning machine vision systems trained with a combination of simulated and real-world data.
It will enhance situational awareness, enabling the unmanned surface vehicle (USV) to operate in congested marine environments.
The Synthetic Imagery training for Machine Vision in Extreme Environments (SIMVEE) project will build on ASV'S COLREGs cognisant, autonomous collision avoidance and path planning capability.
The project will use BMT's Rembrandt simulator to train and validate ASV Global's vision algorithms to detect and classify objects at sea.
A key project output will be improved situational awareness for the autonomy onboard and the remote human supervisor.