The research team at Marine Robotics Laboratory brings together specialists from complementary disciplines including ship hydrodynamics, autonomous control, artificial intelligence, and embedded systems.
Faculty member at Istanbul Technical University's Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering. Provides academic leadership in ship hydrodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, ship motions, and marine vehicle control.
Prof. Dr. Ömer Kemal Kınacı serves as a faculty member at the Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering at Istanbul Technical University. He completed his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral studies in Ship and Marine Technology Engineering at Istanbul Technical University, and his academic work focuses on ship hydrodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, ship motions, and the control of marine vehicles.
His research areas include ship motions, underwater acoustics, vortex-induced vibrations, propulsion systems, maneuvering modeling, CFD-based analyses, and control problems for autonomous marine vehicles. His recent work highlights dynamic positioning models for ships, digital twin approaches for autonomous ship navigation, the influence of hydrodynamic coefficients on maneuvering performance, and ship power prediction in waves.
Within Marine Robotics Laboratory, he provides academic leadership in studies on ship motion modeling, autonomous navigation, path following, dynamic positioning, and experimental/numerical validation processes.
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Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Cihad Delen
Academic and Technical Coordinator
CFDShip HydrodynamicsManeuvering ModelingV&V
Assistant Professor at Istanbul Technical University and academic/technical coordinator of Marine Robotics Lab. Works on experimental modelling, RANS-based CFD, and control problems for autonomous marine vehicles.
He serves as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering at Istanbul Technical University and undertakes the academic and technical coordination of Marine Robotics Lab. His work focuses on experimental and numerical ship hydrodynamics, CFD-based resistance and propulsion analysis, maneuvering modeling, and control problems for autonomous marine vehicles.
In his research, he emphasizes experimental modeling, scale effects, uncertainty analysis, and verification–validation processes, while combining RANS-based methods with experimental approaches. He conducts interdisciplinary studies with undergraduate and graduate students, aiming for practice-oriented and measurable outcomes.
In his current studies, the integration of CFD-based hydrodynamic coefficients into ship speed, heading angle, path-following control, and dynamic positioning (DP) problems is addressed within the scope of model-based and data-supported control approaches.
Research assistant at ITU's Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, pursuing a PhD in Ship and Marine Technology Engineering. Works on experimental and numerical ship hydrodynamics and dynamic positioning systems.
He works as a research assistant at Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, and is pursuing his PhD in Shipbuilding and Ocean Engineering. He completed both his bachelor's and master's degrees in the same department; in his master's thesis, he investigated the free roll decay of the ONR Tumblehome ship experimentally and numerically.
His research focuses on experimental and numerical ship hydrodynamics, ship motions, maneuvering modeling, free-running model tests, and dynamic positioning systems. Within the Marine Robotics Laboratory, he contributes to projects on autonomous marine vehicles, path following, and dynamic positioning, particularly in hydrodynamic modeling, experimental testing, and data analysis.
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Afşin Baran Bayezit
PhD Researcher
AIReinforcement LearningAutonomous ControlROSEmbedded Systems
PhD researcher at ITU working on autonomous control, machine learning, ROS-based applications, and experimental validation for marine vehicles.
Afşin Baran Bayezit is a PhD researcher in Ship Building and Ocean Engineering at Istanbul Technical University and serves as a research assistant and laboratory member at Marine Robotics Lab. His work focuses on autonomous control, machine learning, and experimental validation for marine vehicles.
His main areas of expertise include reinforcement learning and machine learning for autonomous systems, control theory, system modeling, ROS-based applications, embedded C/C++ systems, sensor/actuator integration, and experimental validation on real-world and model-scale platforms.
His research is centered on AI-supported control algorithms, data-driven ship motion modeling, cost-efficient estimation of ship hull hydrodynamic derivatives, and the design-test cycle of autonomous ship systems. At MARIN R&D, he has worked on data-science-based estimation of ship hull derivatives and the development of a new safety criterion for passenger ships.
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Mostafa Abdelkhalek
PhD Researcher
GNCINS/GPSSensor FusionDynamic PositioningMPC/LQR
PhD researcher at ITU in aeronautical engineering. Works on real-time guidance, navigation and control systems for autonomous marine vehicles; contributed to the development of a DPS architecture achieving ~10 cm station-keeping accuracy.
Mostafa Abdelkhalek is pursuing his PhD studies in Aeronautical Engineering at Istanbul Technical University and conducts research at the Marine Robotics Lab on real-time guidance, navigation, and control systems for autonomous marine vehicles. His work focuses on INS/GPS integrated navigation, navigation in GPS-denied environments, multi-sensor fusion, real-time trajectory optimization, dynamic positioning, and control problems for autonomous marine systems.
His research is built around EKF/UKF-based estimation methods, GNSS/IMU sensor fusion, model-based control, LQR, MPC, real-time embedded systems, and SIL/PIL/HIL validation processes.
At the Marine Robotics Lab, he served as the technical lead in the design, implementation, and field validation of a real-time dynamic positioning system for a scale model platform supply vessel, contributing to the development of a navigation and control architecture that achieved approximately 10 cm station-keeping accuracy.
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Ahmet Kaan Karabüber
PhD Researcher
Active Roll DampingDynamic PositioningEmbedded ControlSensor FusionPCB
PhD researcher and research assistant at Yıldız Technical University. Works on active fin controllers, dynamic positioning systems, embedded software, and hardware integration.
After completing his bachelor's degree in Mechatronics Engineering at Kocaeli University, he received his master's degree in Mechatronics Engineering from Yildiz Technical University. Since 2023, he has been continuing his doctoral studies in Control and Automation Engineering at the same university. Since 2020, he has been working as a research assistant in the Department of Marine Engineering Operations at Yildiz Technical University.
In his master's research, he addressed the roll damping problem using active fin controllers; he comparatively investigated linear and nonlinear controllers in a simulation environment and subsequently validated the study experimentally at the Hydrodynamic Research Laboratory (HAL) of Yildiz Technical University. His doctoral research focuses on dynamic positioning systems.
In his experimental studies, he contributes to controller design, sensor fusion algorithms, simulations, and the transfer of the designed systems to real hardware — including electrical/electronic design, embedded software development, PCB design and production, propulsion system integration, and the establishment of wireless communication infrastructure.
Research assistant at ITU's Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering. Works on experimental and numerical ship hydrodynamics, ship resistance, propulsion performance, and CFD-based analyses.
He serves as a Research Assistant at the Faculty of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Istanbul Technical University. His work focuses on experimental and numerical ship hydrodynamics. Within this scope, he conducts numerical and experimental studies related to ship resistance, propulsion performance, and maritime applications. In his master's research, he focused on investigating the propulsion performance of planing boats.
Within the projects carried out at the Marine Robotics Laboratory, he is part of the team responsible for CFD-based analyses and contributes to the mechanical design and implementation processes of the systems developed within the scope of autonomous marine vehicle studies.
