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hobby Jan 2026 → present Ongoing

Ligmax, an autonomous boat

A custom boat designed from scratch. Hull, electronics, perception, and software. The goal is an autonomous-capable platform with full situational awareness: dual gimballed cameras, lidar, integrated battery pack, and onboard buoy detection. In progress throughout 2026.

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

Top-view sketch of the hull
Hull, top view sketch
Front-view sketch of the hull
Hull, front view sketch
Main hull rendering
Main hull
V2 model rendering
V2
Components layout
Internal components
Battery pack
Custom battery pack
Battery movement actuator
Battery mass-balance
Side movement
Side trim control
Front gimbal
Front gimbal
Front camera assembly
Front camera
Side view of the front camera assembly
Front camera, side view
Both cameras and top light
Cameras & top light
Front sensor housing
Front sensor housing
Rear sensor housing
Rear sensor housing
Top-mounted sensors
Top sensors
Lidar test output
Lidar test
Buoy detection model output
Buoy detection model
Full assembly under bright light
Full assembly

Status

Mechanical design is locked. Electronics are bench-tested and integrating now. Perception models are training against a custom buoy dataset. On-water trials are scheduled for later this year.

Design document

Full design document (CAD overview, sensor stack, electrical, control):

Download: Ligmax.pdf (full design document)
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