IIT Madras students secure 3rd place in Global Njord Challenge 2023 in Norway

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras student team ‘Aritra’ has secured third place globally and has won the Sustainability Award in Njord Challenge 2023, hosted by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. The team also won a cash prize of 10,000 NOK (Norwegian Krone).

According to the institute, the Njord - Autonomous Ship Challenge is an international student competition in which participants design and build an autonomous ship. Teams are invited to bring their vessels to Trondheim who compete in a series of challenges.

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Seven top international teams including one from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA participated in the competition. Turkey's team secured first position, followed by Portugal in second place, and the Indian team in third position.

The competition involved testing of the autonomous surface ships on three categories according to IIT Madras namely “ ability to autonomously navigate in a channel marked by navigational buoys, to dock the vessel autonomously, ability to autonomously detect and avoid dynamic obstacles.”

The IIT Madras team had Mohammed Ibrahim M, Amarnath Singh, Akash Vijayakumar, and Rakshin Ramesh from the Department of Ocean Engineering's Marine Autonomous Vessels (MAV) laboratory. The team was mentored by IIT Madras faculty Abhilash Sharma Somayajula and MA Atmanand.

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Students from various institutes such as Istanbul Technical University, Turkey, MIT, USA, University of Lisbon, Portugal, University of South Eastern Norway, University of Strathclyde, Scotland, and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway participated in the competition.

IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society, Madras Chapter, and the Royal Norwegian Embassy, Delhi sponsored the team for this competition.

V Kamakoti, director of IIT Madras congratulated the team and said, “ There exists an opportunity for Indian industry and startups to take this up on a commercial basis under the ‘Make in India’ program of the Government of India.” He also encouraged students of team 'Aritra' to think of forming a startup themselves.