Ligmax, an autonomous boat
A custom boat designed from scratch. Hull, electronics, perception, and software. The goal was an autonomous-capable platform with full situational awareness: dual gimballed cameras, lidar, integrated battery pack, and onboard buoy detection. Built through the first half of 2026, and succeeded by Mobula.
What's on board
- Hull: Designed and modelled from scratch, with every component placed before fabrication.
- Perception: Lidar plus two cameras on independent gimbals. A buoy-detection CNN runs onboard for navigation reference.
- Power: Custom battery pack with active mass-balance, located to keep the centre of gravity low and trim controllable.
- Compute: Onboard SBC handling perception, control, and telemetry uplink.
Design imagery
Where it ended up
Mechanical design landed, the electronics were bench-tested and integrated, and the buoy detector trained against a custom dataset. Ligmax closed out in August 2026, and everything it taught went straight into the next hull.
That hull is Mobula, built for the 2027 season. Same problem, one addition: a drone launches off the deck so the planner gets a view of the course from the air instead of guessing at it from the waterline.
Design document
Full design document (CAD overview, sensor stack, electrical, control):