IIT Madras students win Sustainability Award in Njord Challenge 2023

The IIT Madras student team Aritra has secured third place globally and also won the Sustainability Award in Njord Challenge 2023, hosted recently by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway.

For their achievement, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras students won a cash prize of 10,000 NOK (Norwegian Krone).

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.

The competition is held for the students with the goal of inspiring innovation and smart autonomy solutions for the marine domain.

The competition also offers students an opportunity for professional development and networking.

The competition saw participation from seven top international teams including one from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA.

The competition involved testing of the autonomous surface ships in three facets:

1. Ability to autonomously navigate in a channel marked by navigational buoys

2. Ability to dock the vessel autonomously

3. Ability to autonomously detect and avoid dynamic obstacles while following the rules of the waterways (also known as COLREGS)

The applications for this project are varied. 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.

These vehicles could be mounted with a suite of sensors to monitor the seas and the ocean-atmosphere to collect data autonomously, which could then be used in models leading to climate change studies.