Working with RAN
During the internship, I helped prepare and operate RAN and wrote its missions in MOOS-IvP, an open-source framework for robot autonomy. I also worked on existing applications. Daily vessel operations gave me experience launching tests, following the boat’s behavior, and troubleshooting its software and communications.
I also linked the boat’s autonomy to the team’s command-and-control system, which used a large language model (LLM) to interpret instructions.
An aircraft alongside the boat
I took a radio-controlled plane and adapted it for autonomous over-water flight coordinated with RAN. Steve Carter Feujo Nomeny’s existing MOOS-IvP aircraft project gave me a starting point, and Steve, Kristian Gulaker, and Lars Martin Ølstad helped me get the aircraft flying. This was the first time I had worked directly across a surface vessel and an aircraft in the field.
The aircraft was a stretch goal for the final three weeks of the internship, and I started without previous radio-controlled aircraft experience. Getting it flying meant learning the hardware and flight-controller setup while adapting the autonomy around it. Working with two vehicles that moved so differently made coordinated missions much more interesting to me than treating each vehicle as a separate project.
I continued working on aircraft commands, flight data, and coordination in my McGill aircraft project and later with PEARL, MIT’s robotic boat and mobile docking platform for drones. The Norway experience was what first drew me to research involving boats and aircraft working together.
Judging at Njord
I served as a guest judge at the 2025 Njord Autonomous Ship Challenge in Trondheim. The competition brings student teams together to design, build, and operate autonomous surface vessels. That year, 11 teams from eight countries took part.
After working on RAN, it was a chance to see how other teams approached the same practical problem: making an autonomous boat perform outside a controlled demonstration. The Kongsberg team also brought its Coastal Monitoring work to Njord for a demonstration. That was separate from my role judging the student competition.