AT A TIME when the world is moving rapidly towards cars that drive themselves, this month an audience at the Alexander Graham Bell Centre will learn of another futuristic idea – Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs).
In the latest of a series of free seminars at the Moray College UHI venue, Dr Wasif Naeem from Queens University Belfast will pose the question – Autonomous Ships: Myth or Reality?
Dr Naeem has specific interest in improving the autonomy of uninhabited vehicles and has been developing collision avoidance strategies for marine craft. His research interests span across optimal and robust control, system identification, multi-vehicle formation control and systems engineering.
The seminar will give insight into USVs, navigation, guidance and control system designs of autonomous underwater vehicles in maritime environments.
Jacqui Taylor, Head of Marketing and External Relations at Moray College UHI said: “We are delighted to welcome Dr Naeem to Moray and the AGB Centre.
“We look forward to hearing about his ground breaking research into engineering systems in maritime environment. This free seminar would be ideal for anyone working in an Engineering field or individuals who are interested to find out more about the current research and developments in the field of engineering.”
With the increasing demand on deploying USVs in maritime applications such as remote sensing, surveillance, coast patrolling plus providing navigation and communication support to unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), the provisioning of obstacle detection and avoidance systems has become a critical issue of the future USVs.
A reliable obstacle detection and avoidance system for USVs is therefore necessarily to improve their autonomy, efficiency and safety.
During the talk Dr Wasif Naeem, will present three marine-related projects including the Hammerhead AUV, Springer USV and the Rolls-Royce led MAXCMAS (Robust MAchine eXecutable Colregs for Marine Autonomous Systems) project.
The seminar begins at 5pm at the Moray Street campus on Tuesday, November 22 with complimentary drinks and canapes with the opportunity to network, followed by the lecture at 5.45pm with a Q&A session at the end.
Anyone interested in attending should register for the free seminar at the Moray College UHI website.