Researchers at the Gdańsk University of Technology have constructed an autonomous, unmanned boat, “Hornet,” designed for surveying the bottom of the Baltic Sea and protecting and inspecting Polish offshore installations, such as offshore wind farms. It is the first unit of this type to be developed entirely in Poland and it is many times cheaper than its foreign counterparts.
The work, conducted under the Horizon 2020 program supervised by the European Commission, which supports research and innovation, began in 2020. A team of PG scientists led by Prof. Łukasz Kulas has created an original architecture for the entire system, including both specialized apparatus and software.
In addition to the data-processing system, the seven-meter-long boat was equipped with structural cabling and a number of sensors for detecting objects, including cameras, radars and lidars, known, for example, from the state-of-the-art cars.
