Solgenia -- A Test Vessel Toward Energy-Efficient Autonomous Water Taxi Applications

2025-02-03

AI Summary

To address the growing demand for green and efficient urban waterborne transportation, this study develops Solgenia—an autonomous surface vessel—and establishes a full-stack autonomous driving system tailored for water-taxi applications. Methodologically, it pioneers the integrated deployment of nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC), multi-extended object tracking (MeOT), and energy-aware optimization, synergistically combining computer vision, numerical optimization, and collision-avoidance algorithms to achieve high-precision real-time navigation and dynamic obstacle avoidance. Key contributions include: (1) a reusable, full-scale vessel validation paradigm that substantially lowers experimental barriers for autonomous surface vehicles; (2) empirical validation of the effectiveness of co-designing energy-aware decision-making with motion control; and (3) a scalable technical platform enabling large-scale, sustainable autonomous waterborne transportation systems.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Intelligent Robots: Multi-Robot Systems
• Multiagent Systems: Distributed Problem Solving

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Efficiency and scalability of Web search engines

Abstract

Autonomous surface vessels are a promising building block of the future's transport sector and are investigated by research groups worldwide. This paper presents a comprehensive and systematic overview of the autonomous research vessel Solgenia including the latest investigations and recently presented methods that contributed to the fields of autonomous systems, applied numerical optimization, nonlinear model predictive control, multi-extended-object-tracking, computer vision, and collision avoidance. These are considered to be the main components of autonomous water taxi applications. Autonomous water taxis have the potential to transform the traffic in cities close to the water into a more efficient, sustainable, and flexible future state. Regarding this transformation, the test platform Solgenia offers an opportunity to gain new insights by investigating novel methods in real-world experiments. An established test platform will strongly reduce the effort required for real-world experiments in the future.

Problem

• autonomous driving
• water taxi
• urban traffic system

Innovation

• Autonomous Navigation
• Environmental Sustainability
• Efficient Transportation