Display of the Aksanawa prototype ship, designed by the ITS student team, while on the surface of the water

ITS Campus, ITS News – Reporting from the National Transportation Accident Committee (KNKT), Indonesia experienced 179 accidents in waters between 2007 and 2010. Therefore, a team of students from Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) created an Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) ship to help search for victims. accidents on the water.

The head of the ITS Aksanawa design team, Dion Andreas Solang, revealed that the Aksanawa ship is a follow-up innovation to an autonomous ship initiated some time ago, namely the YOLO-Boat. “Aksanawa has a significant development from its predecessor,” he said.

Please note that Aksanawa is designed to assist the Search and Rescue (SAR) team in rescues when an accident occurs at sea. Aksanawa adopted the International Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue (IAMSAR) search pattern, such as Expanding Square and Parallel Track Search. Later, the operator only needs to give orders with the microcontroller. Then the ship will automatically move according to the pattern ordered.

Equipped with a 6200 mAh Li-PO battery, the Aksanawa ship can last for 113 minutes at a speed of 0.5 m/s. In addition, the Aksanawa ship uses a modular system or can be disassembled to facilitate sending the boat to the accident site.

Unlike the YOLO-Boat, which only has one camera on the water’s surface, Aksanawa has two cameras above and below the water’s surface. On the power management side, Aksanawa consumes less power than its predecessor ships. “This is due to Aksanawa’s memory consumption of only 20 megabytes, less than the YOLO-Boat, which consumes 200 megabytes of memory,” he explained.

The ITS student team designed the Aksanawa innovative ship to help search for victims of sea accidents.

Even though it takes up less memory, Aksanawa can detect victims more accurately because very few Floating Point Operations Per Second (FLOPS) are used. “With a few FLOPS, Aksanawa can produce a score of 30 frames per second,” added the Computer Engineering Department student.

In addition, he continued, Aksanawa uses a deep learning-based object detection model to detect objects. With that model, low light is not an obstacle to finding victims. As a result, Aksanawa can detect objects up to a depth of 31 meters below the surface of the water. “In addition, Aksanawa is designed to use a catamaran hull, so the ship has good stability,” he said.

When an accident occurs in the waters, a rescue ship will come to the scene with the Aksanawa ship. This ship will be launched from a rescue ship to explore the area designated by the control station to search for victims. “When detecting a victim, the ship will send its coordinates to the rescue ship while following the victim if the victim is carried away,” Dion explained.

Thanks to this innovation, Dion and his team won a silver medal at the 2022 National Student Scientific Week (Pimnas) category for the Karsa Cipta Student Creativity Program (PKM-KC). “Even though it won the championship, the Aksanawa ship can still be developed to be even better, one of which is changing the camera to a thermal camera that can detect temperature,” he concluded. (ITS Public Relations)

Reporter: Thariq Agfi Hermawan