Situational Awareness

The guidance system should be able to detect and react to a number of different objects and vessels in its surroundings, including the following.

Other vessels

The situational awareness algorithms should be able to detect traffic and determine another vessel's heading, position and velocity. At the time being, there are only 2 other boat models available in the simulator for testing due to difficulties with licensing. They are called 'Finn' and 'Havfruen', and their models are located in /Models/BoatModels. More boat models will be made available in the near future.

Nautical Charts

To assist their guidance systems, teams can choose to incorporate nautical maps of Trondheim harbor. The Norwegian Mapping Authority (Kartverket) have kindly given us access to high resolution charts which we can offer to teams, however we are not permitted to openly distribute them. Please contact us if you are interested, such that we can send the files by email.

The only restriction Kartverket have given us is to not redistribute the charts, and if any promotional material includes (parts of) the charts, Kartverket's logo should be made visible.

Sea markers

The autonomous vessel should be able to detect and correctly maneuver according to various sea markers. As there are numerous different kinds of sea markers in use around the world, a standard set is included in the simulator based on sea markers used in Norway.

  • The pointed pole (1st from the left) indicates a shallow area. The flag always points towards deep water.

  • The red lateral marker (2nd from the left) should be passed such that the marker is on the port side of the vessel, if it is travelling in the waterway's main direction. The main direction is generally the direction traveling predominantly north or east. For simplicity, this will always be the case in the Challenge. The red lateral marker has a flat top.

  • The free-standing shallow marker (3rd from the left) warns of a small shallow area that can be passed on all sides.

  • The green lateral marker (4th from the left) should be passed such that the marker is on the starboard side of the vessel, if it is travelling the waterway's main direction. The green lateral marker has a pointed top.

At the moment, these markers are not distributed around the Trondheimsfjord model as they are in real life. They can still be used for testing, as they can be copied and moved around in the Unity editor. Additionally, these markers will often be bent with significant angles, which teams' guidance systems should be able to handle.

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