Each year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) holds a MOOS-DAWG working group meeting in Cambridge that brings together MOOS and IvP developers and practitioners to discuss the progress of Mission Oriented Operating Suite (MOOS)-based software applications and related best practices.

Since 2017, Sea Machines has attended these annual workshops to network and share development updates on its products, which are built upon the MIT application. During this year’s event, however, the Sea Machines team made a splash by showing up to the event with a new company test boat, Lightning, which had been recently outfitted with the latest version of the company’s SM300 autonomous-command technology.

Along the Boston Harbor, before an audience of 40 workshop attendees, Sea Machines’ Lauren Lamm, marine vessel test lead, (shown above) demonstrated the workboat’s advanced capabilities via the following mission and behavior-based autonomy exercises:

• Remote autonomous control from an onshore location,
• ENC-based mission planning,
• Autonomous waypoint tracking, and
• Autonomous search-and-survey paths.

In addition to the engaging, on-water demonstration, Sea Machines’ Don Black, vice president, sales and marketing, gave an educational presentation that introduced the company and provided updates on current projects — including Sea Machines’ A.I.-powered situational awareness system currently being trialed aboard an A.P. Moeller-Maersk container ship in Denmark; the Sea Machines/Department of Transportation Maritime Administration/Marine Spill Response Corp. cooperative agreement that will demonstrate Sea Machines technology aboard a spill-response skimmer later this month; and the partnership with dealer Hike Metal to demonstrate Sea Machines’ ability to enhance marine search-and-rescue operations next spring in Canada.

This annual workshop is hosted by MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and Center for Ocean Engineering, as part of the Laboratory for Autonomous Marine Sensing Systems (LAMSS). MOOS-IvP is pronounced “moose i-v-p”.