The 2024 National Marine Vehicle Design and Production Competition has come to an end. The "Inland River Defender II" salvage and surveying unmanned vessel, jointly designed by Navtimes and the Navigation College of Northwestern Polytechnical University, stood out from numerous entries with its outstanding performance and innovative design concept, and won the special prize of the competition.

Application of Inertial Navigation System

The "Inland River Defender II" unmanned vessel adopts Navtimes' products as the main inertial navigation system, which improves the accuracy of continuous positioning in wireless environmental monitoring grids and enables it to be applied in various complex environments.

'Inland River Guardian Type II': an intelligent guardian of the inland river environment

The "Inland River Defender II" unmanned vessel is a multifunctional unmanned vessel platform designed for the complex water environment of inland rivers. It integrates advanced technologies such as environmental perception, intelligent decision-making, and autonomous control, and can achieve various functions such as autonomous cruising, target recognition, water sample collection, underwater terrain mapping, and garbage salvage.

Compared with the previous generation, the "Inland River Defender II" has been upgraded and optimized in the following aspects:

● Stronger adaptability to the environment：The use of new hull materials and structural design has improved the stability and wind and wave resistance of the hull, enabling it to adapt to more complex inland river environments.

● More intelligent autonomous decision-making ability：Equipped with more advanced sensors and algorithms, it can perceive real-time environmental information and autonomously plan routes and avoid obstacles according to task requirements.

● More efficient task execution capability：Equipped with multifunctional robotic arms and high-precision surveying equipment, it can efficiently complete tasks such as water sample collection, underwater terrain surveying, and garbage salvage.

Innovative design to solve industry pain points

The design of the "Inland River Defender II" unmanned vessel fully considers the practical needs of inland river environmental governance, and proposes innovative solutions to address industry pain points such as low efficiency, high risk, and incomplete data collection in traditional manual salvage:

Unmanned operations ensure personnel safety：Unmanned ships can replace manual entry into dangerous waters for operations, effectively ensuring personnel safety.

Efficient and precise salvage, improving governance efficiency：Unmanned ships can autonomously identify and salvage floating garbage on the water surface, greatly improving the efficiency of garbage salvage.

Comprehensive data collection to assist scientific decision-making：Unmanned ships can collect real-time data on water quality, hydrology, and underwater terrain, providing scientific basis for the management of inland river environments.

The future is promising, supporting the construction of smart oceans

The successful development of the "Inland River Defender II" unmanned ship is another important achievement made by Navtimes and Northwestern Polytechnical University in the field of unmanned systems in the ocean, which will effectively promote the intelligent and unmanned development of China's inland river environmental governance. In the future, the team will continue to optimize the performance of unmanned ships, expand their application scenarios, and contribute to safeguarding clear waters and blue skies and building a smart ocean.

Regarding the National Marine Vehicle Design and Manufacturing Competition

The National Marine Vehicle Design and Manufacturing Competition is a national science and technology innovation competition for college students hosted by the Chinese Society of Shipbuilding Engineering. Its aim is to cultivate college students' innovative consciousness and practical ability, and promote the development of marine equipment technology in China. Since its establishment, the competition has been successfully held multiple times, attracting active participation from numerous universities and research institutes across the country, and has had a wide-ranging social impact.