Monroe Township-based Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) announced progress in offshore charging and autonomous operations, supporting its industry-leading strategy to enable longer-duration, lower-cost maritime missions.
OPT has demonstrated autonomous docking, charging, and redeployment of its maritime drone, the WAM-V® autonomous surface vehicle. The system allows a vehicle to approach a dock, secure itself, recharge and return to operation without human intervention.
This addresses a key limitation in offshore autonomy while providing practical, cost-effective solutions for customers.
OPT is advancing this capability for near-term integration with its PowerBuoy® platform, creating offshore “charging points” that can support continuous operations at sea.
These systems are expected to form a distributed marine charging network for other maritime drones and electric boats.
OPT is also advancing its cutting-edge next-generation maritime resilience enhancement upgrade to its WAM-V platform through its next-generation system architecture program, focused on improving system compatibility, simplifying upgrades, enabling increased endurance, and supporting a broader range of customer payloads.
