AGH Solar Boat Team – summary of the 2022/2023 season

Significant progress in improving the design of the Celka boat and successful starts in the most important international student racing competitions were the biggest achievements of the AGH Solar Boat student circle sponsored by Bossard Poland in the last season.

They are innovative, motivated and function like a small enterprise. They have their own departments responsible for structures, composites, electronics, IT and marketing. They know how to draw up the budget, acquire funds, plan production and efficiently manage a team of several dozen people. They are great at what they do, and they are passionate about it. We proudly present a short summary of the latest, highly successful season of the AGH SB student circle, the first circle we started to sponsor four years ago.

Zero-emission solar boat

The AGH Solar Boat Team is a group of students from the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków that has been implementing an innovative project of a zero-emission solar boat for several years now. Since 2020, Bossard Poland has been supporting the team as one of its commercial partners. As part of our partnership, we have been providing the students with fasteners used to assemble the structure and components of the boat and with our engineering know-how concerning the design and improvement of mechanical joints. The existing design is continuously developed and improved. The current version of the boat is named Celka and it is the second generation of its predecessor, Baśka.

The goal of the team, which consists of 60 talented, passionate and committed young people, is to promote sustainable energy sources and compete in student solar boat races all over the world. The 2022/2023 season was one of the most intensive seasons in the history of the team.

Refurbished Celka, a brand new Barka

Thanks to hundreds of hours of work and tests, the team was able to make a great leap forward in eliminating faults and making many new modifications to the structure of Celka. The designers have revamped the hydrofoil control system, thoroughly completely redesigning the turning system and refurbishing the drive. Celka also received 10 new photovoltaic panels, and its key electronic systems were redesigned for improved racing performance.

At the beginning of 2023, the AGH SB team also built another, fully unmanned and autonomous boat, Barka. It has a catamaran hull, laminated using basalt fibres, dedicated electronic systems, BMS and, most importantly, a dedicated neural network with a machine vision system.

A strong start of the season

All these efforts have not been in vain. In the past season, the AGH Solar Boat Team participated in four international tournaments: one with the autonomous Barka boat in the USA and three European competitions with the Celka solar boat.

In the prestigious RoboBoat 2023 competition in Florida, the unmanned Barka had to perform many tasks without any assistance. Even though the team had very little time to build its latest creation, the project proved to be a big success, and the boat completed the challenges in the tournament without any major issues, and the student circle reached the tournament final for the first time. Barka was also recognised by the jury for the best design of an autonomous boat.  

The Celka solar boat, in turn, which boasts the Bossard logo on its side, competed for the first time in June 2023 in the Solar Sport One race in the Netherlands, where the team grabbed a solid 6th spot. The competition involved two long-distance sailing competitions across 38 and 57 kilometres. Celka performed very well, without even a single fault. Although the team hoped for a place on the podium, they considered the competition to be a success, as well as the perfect warm-up before the big tournament in Monaco.

They lost only to the Dutch

Just one month later, during the Energy Boat Challenge in Monaco, the most important zero-emission boat competition, with 46 crews from 31 universities from all over the world, Celka had a great start in the Solar class, passing the technical inspection in the second shortest time.

Thanks to good performance in the three key races, the sprinter Championship Race, the Endurance race and the Slalom, the team eventually placed 5th in the overall classification of 13 solar teams. Again, they made it very close to the podium (just half a second in the slalom competition). However, the team has many reasons to be proud because they were beaten only by teams from the Netherlands, for whom boat racing is essentially a national sport. The AGH Solar Boat circle surpassed teams from the USA, Portugal or Indonesia, and Celka proved its reliability and energy efficiency, which have always been the strong points of the Kraków team.

The Energy Boat Challenge in Monaco also included an e-sports competition in a solar boat simulator. This competition is also attracting more and more interest, both among the sponsors and the teams, and a representative of the AGH SB placed second in the ranking!

Celka “flies” over the Balaton

Towards the end of August 2023, the team competed in the last race of the season – the Balaton Solar Boat Challenge in Hungary. It was the first edition of the solar race in that region. After dozens of hours of tests in the summer, the main goal of the team was to complete the entire challenge with the new hydrofoil system.

This objective was achieved, and Celka passed the technical inspection without fault and successfully completed the race, placing 7th in the overall classification. It “flew” approximately 100 kilometres in total as one of just three boats. The AGH team, encouraged by the significantly improved reliability of their flying technique, returned from Balaton with great ambitions and plans for the future.

More than racing

The AGH Solar Boat is not just workshop work and racing. The team is also strongly involved in the promotion of nautical electromobility. In the past season, it participated in four grant projects, and its members delivered their papers and research during many scientific and technical conferences. The students from Kraków were promoting science and environmental protection during the Kompozyt Expo and Expo Katowice fairs and during the Great Ecology Lesson event. During the 60th Conference of the AGH University of Science and Technology Student Research Groups, the four representatives of AGH Solar Boat won the main prize for their paper.

Bossard, as a company which regards sustainable development as the core of its business strategy, is proud to support projects like the AGH Solar Boat. It gives us reason for optimism that young people who will soon enter the Polish job market are aware of the challenges faced by the industry of the future and respond with innovation and environmental awareness. We are happy with the team’s every success, no matter how small or big, and keep our fingers crossed for many more spectacular achievements.