Indo Pacific 2025: Australia to equip Evolved Cape-class vessel with GAMA autonomous system

A mock-up of the GAMA system on a console at Indo Pacific 2025. (Janes/Ridzwan Rahmat)

A Royal Australian Navy (RAN) Evolved Cape-class patrol boat will enter sea trials in 2026, during which time onshore trials of remote engineering and autonomy systems will be conducted, a representative from the company has confirmed.

Speaking to Janes at the Indo Pacific International Maritime Exposition 2025 in Sydney on 4 November, the representative said the milestone would pave the way for future Austal vessels to be fitted for optionally crewed operations for the RAN, depending on the success of the trials.

As part of the integration, the Evolved Cape-class vessel will remotely communicate with the Autonomous Remotely Operated Ships (AROS) system from Austal, which will enable the support of capabilities required for optionally crewed, and autonomous vessels.

The Greenroom Robotics representative was not able to disclose the name of the vessel that will be fitted with the system for its sea trials, citing confidentiality concerns.

However, Janes assesses that this will likely be the future ADV Cape Hawke, which is currently under construction at Henderson Shipyard by Australian shipbuilder Austal.

The trials will be used to evaluate autonomous and remotely controlled operations, and it builds upon the Patrol Boat Autonomy Trial (PBAT) programme, which was completed in April 2024.

Like the system deployed for the PBAT, the GAMA system to be used on the Evolved Cape-class vessel will fuse data and information from various sensors and utilise an artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithm to plot the vessel’s next course of action.

This information can come from the vessel’s navigation radar, electro-optical systems, collision avoidance sensors, and also external sources such as automatic identification system (AIS) data.