A Virginia State University (VSU) student team took fourth place in the Artificial Intelligence Tracks at Sea Challenge competition held in the fall of 2020. The competition was held by the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific and the Naval Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Coordination Office, managed by the Office of Naval Research.

Collegiate teams from across the country submitted their solutions for artificial intelligence and software that could track maritime vessel traffic. More than 31 teams competed. A $200,000 prize was distributed among five winning teams and three runners-up. VSU received $30,000 in prize money for its submission.

The VSU team consisted of two students and two faculty advisors from the Computer Science department: VSU Senior Jose Diaz and VSU Junior Curtrell Trott, and Dr. Ju Wang and Dr. Wookjin Choi, both Associate Professors of Engineering and Science. The team developed a software solutions to automatically generate georeferenced tracks of maritime vessel traffic based on data recorded from a single electro-optical camera imaging the traffic from a moving platform.

“The team worked really hard to produce a working solution,” said Dr. Wang. “Students had to quickly learn some cutting edge technologies such as PyTorch, Docker cloud computing, and embedded GPU development. At the peak time, the team met almost daily. The most rewarding part for our students is that they embrace the challenge and learn to solve a really difficult problem.”

CCALS is proud to count VSU as a longtime partner.