Investing in a greener future

The firm said it is the perfect place to invest in a greener future and also raise interest of technical talents to come and work in the maritime sector.

The lab works in collaboration with the University of Rotterdam, among others, and has a team of talented technical students working on innovative maritime technologies.

One project that the lab is currently working on is the new future-oriented project is the construction of a Smart Energy Systems Demonstrator. It is hoped that the project will result in a fully adjustable, and safe, energy distribution network that is based on direct current (DC).

The aim behind the project is to ensure a better overview of all the energy generation and distribution on board through a newly designed human-machine interface. This should result in guidance being made available for the crews which will ultimately improve efficient and economic sailing.

One of the previous projects that came out of the lab was Aquabots – a race between two student teams to sail scale boats autonomously and emission-free.

Students also built two underwater robots. These open source robots, part of the Knowledge Centre RDM, were built based on Open ROV and are taking part in underwater soil research. There will be a demonstration of these robots in collaboration with the Dutch Government in February 2016.