EP 114 — Saronic Technologies' Vibhav Altekar On Building 300 Autonomous Vessels In Two Years For Zero Crew

What happens when you design ships for full autonomy from day one instead of retrofitting crewed vessels? At Saronic Technologies, it meant removing living quarters, plumbing, and human-centric systems, then building navigational autonomy and automated ship systems capable of operating 30 to 40 days without human contact.

Vibhav Altekar, Co-Founder and CTO, walks Dave through building over 300 Corsairs in under two years, betting early on fully passive sensing for contested RF environments, and the first-ever rescue of a downed aircrew by an unmanned vessel.

Topics discussed:

• Designing autonomous vessels from scratch versus retrofitting crewed ships
• Building intelligent agents as the foundation for collaborative autonomy
• Operating fully passive in GPS-denied and contested RF environments
• Bridging the air-water gap between UAVs and UUVs
• Encoding mariner expertise into a digital captain for challenging seas
• Competing with Chinese shipbuilding through autonomous production
• Partnering with Castellion to launch hypersonic weapons from unmanned platforms
• Reducing developer-to-ocean testing cycles to 48 hours

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