Autonomous Vessel Navigation
We built the operator web interface for an autonomous marine navigation platform, enabling real-time vessel control, telemetry visualization, and mission planning.
Telemetry latency from vessel to operator screen
Of sea trials run through the console we built
Control modes with zero-ambiguity state transitions
The challenge
Patlife was building an autonomous marine navigation platform and needed an operator interface that could keep up with vessels in the field: live telemetry, mission planning, and manual override — all in a browser, all in real time.
The hard constraints were latency and trust. An operator watching a vessel two kilometers offshore can't work with stale data, and a confusing interface in a manual-override moment is a safety problem, not a UX nitpick.
Our approach
We designed the operator console around a WebSocket telemetry pipeline that streams vessel position, heading, and sensor state with sub-second latency, with graceful degradation when connectivity drops.
Mission planning was built as a map-first workflow: operators draw routes, set waypoint behaviors, and simulate runs before committing them to a live vessel.
Every state transition — autonomous, assisted, manual — was made unambiguous in the UI, with confirmation patterns tuned with real operators during sea trials.
The results
The console shipped and has been used through live sea trials, with operators managing vessels in real conditions.
Telemetry latency stayed within the operational budget even on marginal coastal connectivity.
Stack
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