Fully Autonomous Ship With No Crew Set To Make World’s First Autonomous Transatlantic Voyages

ProMare, a non-profit marine research organization in collaboration with IBM, the University of Plymouth, and another scientific organization have designed a fully autonomous ship named Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS).

MAS is fully-autonomous and will be world’s first full-sized vessel to set transatlantic voyage with zero crew members.

It was be launched from Plymouth, UK on 16th September 2020 and will travel to Plymouth, Massachusetts, spending six months travelling and collecting data about the state of Ocean.

Image Credits: ibm.com

Chief technology officer of IBM (UK), Andy Stanford-Clark told that the vessel will be controlled by an AI-Pilot from the shore. AI stands for Artificial Intelligence.

Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) is a trimaran type ship. A trimaran is a yacht with three hulls in parallel.

It took two years to complete the designing, construction and training of its AI models. The fully-autonomous trimaran was lifted to the waters of Plymouth.

Mayflower Autonomous Ship will be able to spend long durations at sea collecting critical data about the ocean.

It is designed to provide a safe, flexible and cost-effective way of collecting and storing data across the sea. Mayflower promises to transform oceanography with the help of various scientists and other autonomous vessels to study about critical topics like global warming, micro-plastic pollution and marine life conservation.

ProMare is coordinating the scientific studies with IBM and other scientific organizations.

MAS features an AI Captain which is developed by ProMare and IBM which will be able to sense the routes, weather conditions, locations with no human captain or other crew members on board. This new class of marine AI consists of IBM’s latest and cutting edge technology computing systems, automation and various other systems, which is based on Red Hat Open Source software.

MAS is 15 meters long and 6.2 meters wide and weighs about 5 tonnes (4535 KGs) and the equipment onboard weighs 0.7 tonnes (700KGs). It can cruise with a maximum speed of 10 knots. It will be powered by a solar-driven hybrid electric motor. The navigation system includes Precision GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System), IMU (Inertial Measurement Units), radar, weather station, SATCOM, AIS.



References: ibm.com

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Source: Maritime Shipping News