VESSEL CONVERSION | Vektor – Former police boat rebuilt as sensor testbed for German science organisation
Hamburg-based research organisation the Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services (Fraunhofer CML) recently unveiled the latest addition to its fleet of vessels.
Vektor was originally commissioned as a police patrol boat in 1995 but has been converted into a maritime research platform. The conversion was undertaken by Fraunhofer CML personnel over the course of the previous year.
The vessel’s main area of operations will encompass the North and Baltic Seas.
“She is a compact, patrol-boat-grade research platform with a seaworthy special hull for highly stable operations,” Jan Solle of Fraunhofer CML’s Ship and Information Management Department told Baird Maritime. “The hull design was developed to ensure safe operations in the Baltic Sea in all weather and visibility conditions, while a lowerable stern with an integrated 250kg crane will enable safe deployment of underwater robots and a multi-beam sonar.”
Solle added that the vessel will also serve as a mobile node of AI-enabled, privacy-preserving sensor networks for maritime safety and security.
“We required a platform that could handle the worst sea conditions and allow both crew and passengers to stay on board even under sub-optimal to poor weather conditions. The FRP hull is therefore ideal for testing the various sensors placed around the vessel.”
The boat needed to be suitable for real-world trials in inland and coastal waters as well as deployment of both surface and underwater drones and extensive data collection and processing. Other key requirements were “cargo-ship-like” bridge systems, seven research workstations, a large working deck, and suitability for nighttime operations.
Solle said the vessel was intended to bridge the gap between laboratory testing and at-sea operations by enabling realistic, repeatable trials of new maritime technologies. It was also developed with the aim of enhancing maritime situational awareness and critical infrastructure protection through the use of passive privacy-preserving sensing and AI-driven fusion.
Fitted out for advanced detection of hazards in support of navigation safety efforts
Vektor has a length of approximately 12.5 metres (41 feet), a beam of four metres (13 feet), and space for up to 12 people. There are three workstations for scientists on the bridge and four belowdeck.
The propulsion arrangement consists of two MAN 400hp (300kW), six-cylinder engines and a 24V generator for charging the electrical system. Having only two engines guaranteed low-speed manoeuvrability, which would make it easier for the vessel to perform a broader range of measurement tasks as well as navigate in restricted spaces.
“The propulsion adopts a mission-first configuration,” Solle told Baird Maritime. The power output and the hull are fine-tuned for stability and payload handling to ensure the conduct of precise measurement tasks using a compact platform.”
The electronics suite includes a Furuno radar, a sonar, an AIS, magnetic field measurement sensors, and GNSS spoofing/jamming detection sensors. In combination with radio direction-finding equipment on land, the electronics will enable the detection of objects on the water that would otherwise remain hidden from conventional instruments.
To enable her to serve as a test and development platform for researchers, new communication and navigation technologies have also been installed. Among the technologies to be tested on the vessel are autonomous navigation solutions and speech recognition software for maritime radio communications.
Capable of generating a bird's-eye view of shipping traffic even from non-cooperative vessels
The electronics interface can be accessed via mobile land- and sea-based sensor platforms. Solle said the setup permits only passive reception with no data emissions and therefore no personal data being processed.
Fraunhofer CML developed these sensor platforms to help ensure the safety of shipping traffic in the Baltic Sea by collecting traffic data in compliance with data protection regulations for hazard identification. Three such platforms will be used in conjunction with Vektor to create a maritime situation picture independent of publicly available data such as AIS signals.
Because this arrangement will also be able to detect vessels and objects that would otherwise remain undetected, this will significantly improve maritime safety in critical sea areas.
The work to incorporate a diverse selection of new technologies proved challenging especially since the platform selected was a 12.5-metre vessel.
“The main issue we needed to overcome was in packing cargo-ship-grade nautical systems and seven workstations into a compact platform without compromising stability or deck space,” Solle told Baird Maritime. “We also needed to integrate the lowerable stern and crane – which had a 250kg load and an electric gear winch – while preserving measurement stability and seakeeping.”
The lowerable stern itself posed challenges with regard to structural integration and weight distribution. Also, additional work needed to be undertaken to ensure that the vessel’s onboard layout was modular and upgradable in order to accommodate evolving communication and navigation technologies.
“Through our work on Vektor, we learned that modularity and standard interfaces are essential for rapid reconfiguration between missions, and that a stability-first hull design and integrated launch and recovery capability can greatly improve safety and repeatability of tests,” Solle remarked.
