The student group Navier USN from University of South-Eastern Norway has won the Njord Challenge 2024, the World Championship for students in autonomous ships. The competition is organized by and for students in Trondheim.

Participants develop systems to control autonomous ships, which can operate without human intervention. After two intense weeks of fine-tuning, coding, hard teamwork, and plenty of coffee, the USN students were finally able to celebrate their victory.

– "Everyone gave a hundred percent in the competition, and we couldn’t be happier with the result. The close and strong collaboration with the university provides us students with a solid and safe platform to challenge ourselves even more in our studies," say project leaders Sara Selnes, Aleksander Nordmo, and Markus Marstad.

They are especially proud of the victory since Navier USN had the fewest students and the lowest educational level, bachelor's, among the participants. In the competition, the USN students generously shared their entire dataset with all the competing teams.

– "For us, sharing knowledge to achieve development is a core value," explains Sara.

Navier USN consists of a group of students from engineering, maritime studies, IT, economics, and management, all passionate about autonomous technology. The students build and program small autonomous sea drones, with Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace as the main sponsor and several industry partners.

The top three in the Student World Championship for Autonomous Ships

1. Navier USN
2. Técnico Solar Boat from Portugal
3. AGH Solar Boat Team from Poland

Read more: "We are excited to host next year's World Championship in Autonomous Maritime Technology in Trondheim" 

Photos by: Lars Bugge Aarset / Ocean Autonomy Cluster