Sponsored article by iXblue

Cetos Dronekit: Powering Autonomy at Sea

A new era of increased autonomy powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning is currently bringing a world of change to the global maritime sector. As ever more autonomous underwater and surface vehicles are taking to sea, improving the autonomy capabilities of platforms has become a key focus for many companies. iXblue, as a provider of resilient navigation solutions that play a central role in this new autonomous era, has been developing advanced AI and software capabilities through its robotics division, Robopec, and is now able to offer a new integrated control system for supervised autonomous operations.

Providing surface platforms with highly accurate positioning and guidance information in maritime environments, Cetos dronekit is a turnkey solution that brings robust autonomous capabilities to maritime platforms of any size. By enabling mission planning and execution, along with complete scene analysis for collision avoidance, this new solution allows for the safe, efficient and reliable deployment of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), leading to successful over-the-horizon operations. Fully scalable, the Cetos dronekit solution can be tailored to customers’ needs and requirements and comprises three sea-proven modules: Plan, Sense and Drive.

Through the Plan module, operators are able to enter complete mission scenarios into the Cetos dronekit MMI, defining various key factors (e.g. paths, speeds, points) on the displayed nautical chart.

Based on a multi-sensor perception, Cetos dronekit’s three modules provide advanced positioning and guidance in maritime environments. Cetos dronekit is a turnkey solution that brings robust autonomous capabilities to maritime platforms of any size.

The mission plan is then sent to the Drive module, which acts as an execution engine that runs all pre-planned sequences and executes them by handling the actuators of the surface platform and by reacting to the information sent by the Sense module. Merging the visual and navigation data acquired by the various sensors installed on the platform (e.g. GNSS, AIS, INS, radars, infrared cameras, Lidars), the Sense module provides robust navigation information and enables the detection of obstacles. Once potential hazards have been identified, a signal is sent to the Drive module and the platform avoids the hazards by adapting the mission’s course to this new information, in accordance with the usual COLREGs.

Through Cetos dronekit and its three scalable modules, iXblue is thus providing a new advanced solution that powers the autonomy of maritime platforms and enables their safe and reliable deployment, from their launch and recovery to their mission’s execution. With Cetos dronekit, iXblue is offering a sea-proven technology that has already conducted many successful operations. Cetos dronekit is indeed at the core of the company’s own USV, DriX, now considered to be a disruptive and game-changing technology, and successfully ensures the USV’s autonomous capabilities.

Cetos dronekit is at the heart of iXblue’s own USV, DriX.