Hyundai, Raymarine collaborate on self-driving boats

Boating has experienced a resurgence in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as people stop travelling and invest in “staycations”, holidays around where they live, rather than head to exotic locations.

The boom in the shift to wanting to own a boat is amplified as people jump on social media and watch friends and family who do own one have fun.

However, while loads of people have jumped on board, there are many others who have stopped short of pulling the trigger.

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It turns out that the reason why people new to boating don’t take the leap is most often based on fear. 

Studies worldwide show that the primary reason people don’t buy boats is that they’re afraid – they’re worried about having to operate the boat in confined spaces and messing up like the people they’ve seen online in those “Top Boating Fails”-style videos.

Worst of all is the fear of having to bring the boat back to the dock.

Last year, South Korean manufacturing conglomerate Hyundai Heavy Industries Group, one of the world’s largest shipbuilders, launched an all-new subsidiary called Avikus.

Its role? To develop a fully autonomous, self-driving navigation system for pleasure boats. 

This self-driving boat isn’t some pipe dream that could happen one day in the distant future – they have a working system right now, and they’ve partnered with Raymarine to bring it to market.

The Avikus NeuBoat automated route-planning platform has its roots in Hyundai’s commercial shipping business since the ability to reduce both crew requirements and fuel use through computerised navigation has huge appeal for global shippers.

The system on which NeuBoat is based had its first real test in June this year when the liquid natural gas tanker Prism Courage completed the world’s first trans-oceanic autonomous navigation using the Avikus self-driving system. 

The 299-metre vessel departed Texas, navigated across the Gulf of Mexico, through the Panama Canal, and across the Pacific to Korea under the direct control of the autonomous navigation system, sailing almost 12,000km by itself. 

In the course of its month-long ocean crossing, the system continually determined optimal course inputs and made more than 100 course corrections to avoid other traffic, resulting in a 7.0 per cent fuel savings, and a 5.0 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. 

The Avikus platform works by combining cameras, global positioning systems and lidar – the same technology self-driving cars use that tap lasers to paint a 3D picture of the world around them – to assess on-water situations in real-time and without human intervention through deep learning – trying to teach computers to behave like humans – and sensor fusion algorithms – using the data from the cameras, lidar and GPS to make smart choices about what to do. 

Organised as navigation assistant systems (NAS) and docking assistant systems (DAS), the technology enables logical, intuitive operation to make life easier for boaters with little or no experience at the helm.

The NAS element creates routes for fully autonomous navigation, allowing boaters to enjoy their time on the water without having to actually operate the vessel or understand the meaning of buoys, markers and other navigational aids. 

The DAS technology takes over at the harbour, allowing a boat to dock itself using a 3D surround view system while automatically compensating for current, tides, and even the effect of wakes from passing boats.

Earlier this year, Avikus successfully tested its small boat platform by autonomously navigating the 10km Pohang Canal in Pohang City, Korea. The waterway, with an average width of around 10 metres, is known as a complex and challenging navigational environment with heavy vessel traffic and congested ports.

On-water demonstrations in October at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show in the US allowed marine industry journalists to hop onboard a test boat and go for a ride through the heavily congested harbour, with the automated system commanding the helm.

However, the real purpose behind Hyundai’s presence at the show was an announcement that Avikus had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Raymarine to collaborate on the integration of the Avikus NeuBoat platform into Raymarine’s navigational products, and jointly explore future autonomous platform development.

“This MoU is groundbreaking as it will result in future boaters being able to have all their navigational equipment from Raymarine combined with Avikus NeuBoat, the next-generation autonomous navigation system,” said Avikus CEO, Do-hyeong Lim.

“No other technology has changed the boating experience the way NeuBoat will. 

“Boating on the open water is often seen as the ultimate experience of freedom, but what kind of freedom is it when you must constantly worry about collisions, safety and navigation? 

“With NeuBoat you can experience the true freedom of the open sea on your own terms.”

For its part, Raymarine was equally positive about the collaboration to develop the Avikus platform further, particularly through the potential integration of radar and its Lighthouse cartography.

“Raymarine strives to provide the most innovative, user-friendly and reliable electronics to make boating accessible and safe for everyone,” said Raymarine's general manager, Gregoire Outters. 

“With Avikus’ proven solution in autonomous commercial marine, the signing of this MoU will pave the way for our engineers to work closely together, to deliver this exciting new technology to our leisure boat customers.”

Outters said the collaboration between the two companies represented a true partnership, with both contributing considerable intellectual property to the venture. 

“We are in the very early stages of our partnership with Avikus, and we are exploring ways that we can work together,” Outters said. 

“Radar is an obvious solution to extend the limited range of the lidar sensor used within the system. 

“Raymarine also offers precision heading sensors which are critical to the system. As part of the Teledyne Technologies family [which owns the marine camera and radar maker FLIR], we are also able to supply a wide offering of visible and thermal imaging cameras. 

“Our YachtSense Link 4G marine router can provide a method of connecting remotely to the vessel. We have the critical technologies to develop and improve autonomy, including some of the best sensors within Raymarine and Teledyne; radars, cameras, sonars, autopilots, and automatic identification systems.”

As the two companies work together to develop a fully autonomous system for the leisure marine market, questions will need to be answered around the commercialisation of the product. 

Will the NeuBoat technology be sold pre-loaded onto Raymarine hardware, or be offered on a subscription basis? Is this something that will only come on new boats? Or will it be available on the aftermarket? 

And as the system evolves further, what are the implications for insurance, or COLREGs that specify that a master has to keep watch at all times?

Removing barriers such as fear of navigation and docking will prove key to growing boating in the future, especially if the boating industry wants to expand beyond its existing customer base and attract new participants who have never had a boat in the family before.

The next few years in boating promise to be very interesting.