ai Class · Team Profile

UANTWERP SOLAR BOAT TEAM

🇧🇪 University of Antwerp

The UAntwerp Solar Boat Team is a group of Bachelor’s and Master’s students from the Faculty of Applied Engineering at the University of Antwerp. Building a solar-powered racing boat each year, the team now leads in autonomous sailing for the AI Class.

The team

Meet the team

The UAntwerp Solar Boat Team is a group of Bachelor’s and Master’s students from the Faculty of Applied Engineering at the University of Antwerp. Each year, the team designs and builds a solar-powered racing boat to compete in international competitions, a demanding environment that pushes its members to innovate in efficient, sustainable energy use. In recent years, the team has focused strongly on autonomous sailing: by developing a fully electronic steer-by-wire system, AI-powered object detection and intelligent pathfinding algorithms, supported by a new suite of sensors, it has significantly enhanced the boat’s situational awareness and precision. That expertise now places the team among the front-runners of the AI Class.

University

University of Antwerp

Country

🇧🇪 Belgium

Based in

Antwerp, Belgium

Class

AI Class

Racing number

N°36

The boat

UANTWERP SOLAR BOAT TEAM

The project’s main innovations focus on autonomy, perception and performance. A complete overhaul of the navigation and perception architecture led to a fully custom, ROS2-based navigation stack, designed specifically for high-precision autonomous sailing in dynamic, competitive environments. In parallel, the team introduced a 360-degree stereovision, AI-driven perception system that significantly enhances environmental awareness. By combining advanced computer vision with real-time sensor fusion, the boat can accurately detect obstacles, recognise course elements and respond intelligently during autonomous manoeuvres. Redesigns to the boat’s structure and driveline further improved peak performance, efficiency and reliability, ensuring the platform fully supports the increased demands of high-speed, autonomous operation.

navigation

ROS2 custom navigation stack

perception

360° stereovision AI perception

Pilotage

Steer-by-wire + intelligent pathfinding

ai Class · 2026

Follow the team at the Challenge

UAntwerp Solar Boat Team competes in the AI Class at the 13th Monaco Energy Boat Challenge, 7–11 July 2026 in Port Hercule. The University of Antwerp team brings a solar racing boat built for high-precision autonomy, with a custom ROS2 navigation stack, a 360-degree stereovision AI perception system and real-time sensor fusion for intelligent obstacle detection and manoeuvring.