The project focuses on creating autonomous decision systems and onshore control stations to help with the creation and running of unmanned cargo ships. By utilizing a combination of observations, numerical models, virtual reality, and machine learning, the project will produce algorithms for unassisted navigation and incorporate them into a cutting-edge ship simulator. This will allow for the ships to respond to environmental factors and improve sea freight transport. The ultimate goal is to incorporate automation into ships, including the ability to control them remotely, which will help Australia transition towards an autonomous shipping industry, resulting in improved reliability, efficiency, productivity, and safety.
Our team has accumulated substantial experience in image technology for Earth observations with a specific focus on surface waves and sea ice. Particularly, an array of optical sensors has been conceptualised and put into operation on four icebreakers to measure ocean surface waves and sea ice in the Arctic and Southern Ocean. In its most up-to-date configuration, the array is deployed on the Australian icebreaker RSV Nuyina.
A series of experimental tests were carried out to investigate the interaction between waves and ice floes. Wave generation included both monochromatic and random waves with varying periods and steepnesses. Floes were modelled both using plastic plates and freshwater ice. The main purpose of the research was to investigate the reduction in wave transmission and the role of the overwash, the phenomenon where water washed the upper surface of the plate. More specifically, we have examined an experimental model of wave attenuation in pancake ice, hydroelastic interaction between water waves and floating freshwater ice, and the corresponding wave reflection and transmission.
We developed a stochastic model for probabilistic forecasting of extreme waves. The coupled standard spectral wave models for marine forecasting with a phase resolving model, which solve the primitive wave equation using a Higher Order Spectral Method (HOSM). Results are then post processed to provide wave statistics and probability of extreme for the given sea states.