Marine Autonomous Vehicles (MAV) Laboratory

About the Lab

The MAV Laboratory is part of the Department of Ocean Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. We study and build systems for marine autonomous vehicles — autonomous surface and underwater platforms — with an emphasis on ideas that can be validated in simulation and verified through tank and field trials.

Vision

Our vision is to provide an environment where curiosity meets practicality in marine robotics: a place where people passionate about AI, control theory, and hydrodynamics — in both software and hardware — can feed that curiosity and see their ideas become real vehicles, algorithms, and deployments.

We want students to exchange ideas freely, help each other, and turn imagination into reality — whether that means a new hull, a new controller, a new simulator module, or a field experiment.

We imagine the lab to be a guild of curious minds who help each other deploy their ideas into reality — not only on paper, but in code and in the water.

Mission

• Train researchers to work across disciplines: perception, planning, control, hydrodynamics, and marine systems.

• Maintain facilities and platforms that let ideas move from desk to basin to open water with clear safety and quality practices.

• Partner with industry and defence where aligned, and communicate our work clearly to the public and to prospective students.

Research Identity

The lab’s intellectual centre sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, control theory, and hydrodynamics, applied to marine autonomy — including simulation, identification, and full-scale marine robotic systems.

Looking Ahead

We aspire to grow to a level where the lab can meaningfully support India’s defence and commercial needs in marine autonomy. That is forward-looking ambition: we build toward it through publications, software tools, teaching, and partnerships — one project and one cohort at a time.

Director

Dr. Abhilash Somayajula, Associate Professor & Director, Marine Autonomous Vehicles Laboratory. For biography, courses, and selected talks, see the faculty website.