Swiftships partners with ICS

Swiftships has partnered with ICS Nett (ICS), a Virginia-based technology solutions company, to continue research and development efforts on the ‘Anaconda’, a special operation craft riverine (SOCR).

The autonomous ‘Anaconda’ will be equipped with artificial intelligence capabilities that are faster and have more complex manoeuvrability than its predecessor.

Phase one of the ‘Anaconda’ began with a partnership between Swiftships and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2014, when they created the ‘Anaconda’ as a remotely piloted vessel.

Later, a trajectory-tracking controller was added for use in obstacle free environments. Phase one was completed in 2015, and ICS is adopting phase two to create the ‘Anaconda’ 2.0 as an ongoing project.

ICS will upgrade the current remote control capabilities with BVR satellite-based control for longer, wireless range. Then the original code, control mechanisms, and sensor interface will be updated and validated.

The current ‘Anaconda’ model lacks closed loop data from the boat that is needed to adjust control actions – to combat this, additional sensor interfaces will be equipped to transmit relevant boat data back to the operator console as necessary.

Once the sensory interface is in place, ICS will augment the AI with procedures that will allow it to follow terrain and way point markers, be capable of collision avoidance without direct input, and to perform tactical manoeuvres and loiter in areas for extended periods of time, all without human intervention.

To test the success of the upgrade, ICS will design a test bench system capable of reproducing the field conditions in a simulated environment.