USM’s Roger F. Wicker Center Partners with MAHI to Study Physical Processes in Northern Gulf of Mexico
Fri, 06/30/2023 - 03:41pm | By: Van Arnold
The Roger F. Wicker Center for Ocean Enterprise at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) has partnered with MAHI to integrate the MAHI Sense, on a USM platform to create a fully autonomous surface vessel to study oceanographic
processes in the Northern Gulf of Mexico.
The vessel is a small draft RIB intended for shallow water surveys and monitoring activities. It can be easily deployed from shore or a mother vessel and serves as an excellent platform for blue-tech demonstrations, research and workforce training for helping create an applicant-ready pool of candidates for Gulfport’s emerging uncrewed systems industry.
The MAHI obstacle avoidance and perception software has already produced exceptional
results for researchers at the Wicker Center.
“The MAHI Sense product has us to assemble a very capable autonomous USV for ocean research in improved littoral autonomy in an incredibly short period of time,” said Jason McKenna, Director of Research, Development, Testing, Evaluation & Training at the Roger F. Wicker Center for Ocean Enterprise. “Even before their team landed in the U.S., they worked with us to provide detailed guidance in the selection and dimensioning of components as well the actual integration support for this custom USV. We couldn’t be happier with our partnership with Team Mahi.”
With the contract, MAHI expands its commercial activities in the United States. MAHI has delivered its MAHI
Sense product, covering the hardware deployed on the vessel (edge hardware), software
running on the vessel (edge computing) and software for remote operation. MAHI Sense
processes the data from cameras, digital radar, and AIS to detect obstacles. The vessel
features several control modes ranging from remote control using a handheld controller
to fully autonomous operation.
MAHI CEO Pieter-Jan Note expressed: “MAHI is very excited to be working alongside the growing, talented Maritime Uncrewed team at the Roger F. Wicker Center for Ocean Enterprise. They are a great partner for research related to uncrewed systems, and workforce training of operators. MAHI looks forward to a mutually beneficial collaboration in both research and commercial projects for the Ocean Enterprise Team.”