Monaco Energy Boat Challenge: the Yacht Club de Monaco welcomes AI for the 12th edition
08 July 2024 - 3:13PM
Monaco Energy Boat Challenge: the Yacht Club de Monaco welcomes AI
for the 12th edition
As part of the ‘Monaco Capital of Advanced Yachting initiative’ the
Monaco Energy Boat Challenge makes appointment for next year (2-5
July 2025) with exciting news. The 12th edition will see the debut
of AI. “For 2025 we have many good ideas. For example, we
introduced the Sea Lab class, which is a new class of
boats closer to the industry and the customer. Then we decided to
make room for AI. It is very important to manage a boat like this
having some help as the one that you can get from artificial
intelligence. We can take into consideration the sea, the wind, the
wave, the distance and to be able to make evaluations is ideal with
artificial intelligence. We started the Challenge with two boats
and today we can be proud of what we’re doing because is the young
generation that will build the yachting of the future,” said YCM
general secretary Bernard d’Alessandri.
Introducing AI the Yacht Club de Monaco makes a step forward in
the yachting of the future. “What we’re trying to do as the Yacht
Club de Monaco is that we’re positioning ourselves as a
demonstrator and facilitator of innovation. The AI class will be
applicable to all other classes so all electrical units at the
moment can be further developed to AI class boats and they can be
racing in the normal classes and the AI classes after. Like this we
cover the main 3 pillars: decarbonisation, digital ship operations
and authonomy,” explained Szilard Czibere, YCM development
manager in the sustainability division. “We called it AI class
because it’s quite a broad topic. It’s spectacular when boats get
to navigate without any driver intervention but, on the other hand,
many system at a smaller level are already autonomous systems and
are using AI to optimize their operations.”
The winner of the 11th edition was the Oceanos Team, National
Technical University of Athens. Second place to the Croatian Adria
Energy Boat team and third place to UniBoat from Università di
Bologna. “Our team started in 2016. we started with a competition
in Saint Tropez and then we stated competing in the Monaco Energy
Boat Challenge. Today it’s a very special day for us because we won
a prize that we’ve been trying for many years to win,” explained
Oceanos team manager Konstantina Delioglu. “The competition
was a real challenge for us. We managed to get the first place in
all the challenges and the races. We had some issues in the
beginning, we tried to solve them, we managed it and we had a great
time. The weather was perfect, the team was perfect, we had a very
good communication with the team, everything was perfect,” added
Emilios Monos. The Prince Albert II of Monaco
Foundation Sustainable Yachting Technology Award, launched by
The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, was given out to the
Politecnico di Milano team Physis Peb. The prize, being a grant of
€25,000, was awarded for best technological solution in terms of
energy efficiency and/or carbon reduction. The winner will now be
able to present progress on their project at the Monaco Energy Boat
Challenge for three years starting 2025. “From AI to recycling
via a marriage of advanced technologies with simpler solutions,
there were so many that grabbed the Jury’s attention,” said
Alejandro Velez, Managing Director of UBS (Monaco) who presented
their Innovation Prize to Sea Sakhti which also won the Design and
Communication prizes. Regarding the SeaLab Class, it is dedicated
to vessels that do not hold the standard European certifications,
but offer an exciting glimpse into international design and
engineering approaches.
From an industry point of view, the event becomes more and more
interesting as time goes by. “Our aim as a shipyard is to find more
talents, more engineers to make sure that we will have more
sustainable future for the yachting industry and that's very
important for us,” said Gilles Vernhet, head design of Oceanco.
“For example fuel cells are really improving, new elements of those
fuel cells are improving with the help of the students and it looks
very promising for the future.”
For more information:Press Office LaPresse -
ufficio.stampa@lapresse.it
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/22d283bc-e0ef-4ec1-a4bd-e8eacf43946f