CATIE – Human Factors, Autonomous Systems & Simulation for Autonomous Vessels | HORIZON-CL5-2027-03-D5-16

CATIE is looking to join a European consortium preparing a proposal for HORIZON-CL5-2027-03-D5-16 – Autonomous vessels in short sea shipping and inland waterways.

CATIE brings together complementary expertise in Human Factors, autonomous systems, electronics, sensing and simulation, with experience in safety-critical environments and autonomous navigation.

Our Human Factors team has strong expertise in the interaction between humans and emerging technologies, including autonomous and highly automated systems. We have significant experience in the aviation sector, providing valuable knowledge on human supervision of automation, human-autonomy interaction, situation awareness, cognitive workload, decision-making, trust, acceptance and safety-critical operations.

This expertise can be directly transferred to autonomous and remotely operated vessels, particularly for:

• Human Factors in Remote Operating Centres (ROC)

• Human-machine interaction and interface evaluation

• Human supervision and human-autonomy teaming

• Situation awareness, workload and decision-making

• Trust and acceptance of autonomous systems

• Identification of skills and training needs for operators

• Experimental protocols and evaluation in realistic operational scenarios

CATIE also has strong technical capabilities in electronics, cyber-physical systems, sensing and simulation. In the maritime domain, we collaborated with BlueNav on the development of tools supporting the autonomous navigation of the BlueBoat, a 12-ton vessel designed for inland waterways. Our work included the development of a realistic and configurable simulation environment reproducing vessel behaviour and interactions with the river environment, including wind, waves and currents. The platform integrated simulated sensors such as GPS, LiDAR and thermal cameras, and supported the development and validation of autonomous navigation, heading control and dynamic positioning algorithms before testing on the physical vessel. BlueNav has also expressed its willingness to join us in a consortium for this topic, bringing complementary expertise and operational experience in autonomous inland navigation.

For this Horizon Europe topic, CATIE could therefore contribute to activities related to Human Factors, remote supervision, HMI, operator training, autonomous systems evaluation, simulation, sensor integration, validation and testing.

We are interested in connecting with coordinators, vessel operators, shipyards, ports, inland waterway operators, autonomy technology providers, research organisations and classification or regulatory stakeholders currently building a consortium for this topic.