Funded Projects
List of Funded Projects
Project from Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) under Deep Ocean Mission mandate - AUV Homing and Docking
New Faculty Seed Grant (NFSG)
Center for Martime Experiment to Maritime Experience (ME2ME)
Research Grant from Naval Research Board (NRB)
Project from Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) under Deep Ocean Mission mandate - Prototype Scale Wave-Current Flume
Center of Excellence for Marine Autonomous Systems (CMAS)
Core Research Grant from Science and Engineering Reserach Board (SERB-CRG)
New Faculty Initiation Grant (NFIG)
AUV Homing and Docking
Funding Agency: Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) under Deep Ocean Mission mandate
Duration: 2024-2027
Project Summary
This project is leading to:
Development of an ocean going AUV designed for 300 m water depth
Development of an underwater dock for the AUV to enable charging and data transfer
Development of homing and docking algorithm to dock the AUV in deep sea
Development of wireless inductive underwater charging of AUV in the dock
New Faculty Seed Grant (NFSG)
Funding Agency: IIT Madras
Duration: 2021-2025
Project Summary
This project is leading to
Development of a dockerized ROS-2 based simulator for ASVs and AUVs with capability for Hardware-In-Loop (HIL) testing
Development of collision avoidance and evasion strategies for ASVs and AUVs using traditional and modern methods
Reinforcement, Imitation and Inverse Learning approaches for collision avoidance
Further development of HydRA to simulate Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI)
Physics Informed Learning approaches for solving complex Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) problems
Hullform optimization for improved wave resistance of ships
Visual-Inertial-Odometry (VIO) for navigation in GPS denied environments
Nonlinear control strategies for collision avoidance of ships
Cooperative control of heterogeneous marine robots
Center for Martime Experiment to Maritime Experience (ME2ME)
Funding Agency: Ministry of Education
Duration: 2023-2026
Project Summary
This project is leading to:
Revamping of MATSYA ASV to incorporate the improved design changes from MAKARA and KURMA ASVs
Building of MEENA ASV (scaled model of KCS container ship)
Development of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) capable of leveraging acoustic sensors and communication modules for underwater perception, localization and mapping
Development of cooperative maneuvers between multiple vessels to be safe in a waterway
Cooperative control of heterogeneous marine robots
Comparison of Hydrodynamic Forces and Responses of a Body - 3D Experiments vs 2D Experiments
Funding Agency: Naval Research Board (NRB)
Duration: 2024-2027
Project Summary
This project leads to:
Comparison of motion of a floating structure in waves from 3D wave basin and 2D wave flume
Comparison of forces on a floating structure in waves from 3D wave basin and 2D wave flume
Prototype Scale Wave-Current Flume Development
Funding Agency: Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) under Deep Ocean Mission mandate
Duration: 2024-2027
Project Summary
This project is leading to
Development of a large scale facility (500 m x 5 m x 8 m) that can generate 1:1 scale ocean waves in a controlled environment
A facility that can generate a current upto 1 m/s
A facility with a dry-back piston wavemaker that can generate waves of period ranging from 4 s to 20 s with a significant wave height of 2 m
A facility to test offshore structure dynamics at the 10 m deep pit region of the flume
Center of Excellence for Marine Autonomous Systems (CMAS)
Funding Agency: Ministry of Education
Duration: 2021-2023 (Completed)
Project Summary
This project led to:
Development of two new ASVs - MAKARA (scaled model of ONR Tumblehome - Navy Destroyer) and KURMA (scaled model of KVLCC2 - Very Large Crude Oil Carrier)
Improvement in the electrical and electronic architecture based on the lessons learnt from MATSYA (scaled model of KCS container ship)
Development of dockerized implementation of guidance, navigation and control algorithms for robust implementation in the field
Implementation of in-house kinematic based Kalman Filter for vessel navigation
Reinforcement learning (RL) based controllers to achieve path following
Dockerized implementation of Reinforcement Learning (RL) based path following control on ASVs
Obstacle avoidance strategies using RL agents
Collision avoidance based on traditional approaches like Artificial Potential Fields and Velocity Obstacles
System Identification approaches for determining a hydrodynamic model of a ship purely from data
Core Research Grant
Funding Agency: SERB
Duration: 2021-2024 (Completed)
Project Summary
This project has led to the development of:
An accurate simulation environment for the KCS ship that has been validated with data from the literature
Physics based modeling of wind forces and moments for ships
Reinforcement learning (RL) based controllers to achieve path following
Traditional controllers such as PD and sliding mode controllers in conjunction with Integral Line of Sight (ILOS) guidance to deal with underactuation of ships
Reward functions for path following and their interpretability
Obstacle avoidance strategies using RL agents
Collision avoidance based on traditional approaches like Artificial Potential Fields and Velocity Obstacles
System Identification approaches for determining a hydrodynamic model of a ship purely from data
Practical implementation of RL agents on scaled marine robots operating in field environment
New Faculty Initiation Grant (NFIG)
Funding Agency: IIT Madras
Duration: 2019-2021 (Completed)
Project Summary
This project led to:
Involvement of several undergraduate students into the design, fabrication, integration and control of an Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV) with hands on experience
A self propelled ship model with a propeller and rudder - MATSYA (scaled model of KCS container ship)
A craft that can be controlled through ROS-1 running on an on-board Raspberry Pi and uses a student smartphone as its sensor suite