IBM has recently announced an ambitious project to build an entirely autonomous research ship that will cross the Atlantic Ocean in 2020, called the “Mayflower”. The ship will set sail in September, on the 400-year anniversary of the original Mayflower’s voyage from Plymouth, England to Plymouth, USA, and will follow a similar course.
The main goal of this trip is to utilize the 3 research pods custom designed by academics at the University of Plymouth in order to conduct experiments including micro-plastic level measuring, sea mammal monitoring, and ocean floor mapping. IBM has kitted out the Mayflower with some of their latest tech in order to handle the computations and analysis locally on the craft itself, as well as allowing it to communicate with IBM’s own data centers on the mainland. To power these computers, the Mayflower is equipped with an array of solar panels and wind turbines, with a diesel engine onboard only as a last resort in case of bad weather conditions.
All this computing power also serves another purpose: navigating the ship over the seas. This Mayflower, in stark contrast to its namesake, will be entirely autonomous, i.e. there will not be a single human on board. IBM is using its Artificial Intelligence and Machine Vision capabilities in order to outfit the craft with a host of radar, lidar, and optical sensors, allowing it to “see” any possible ocean hazards. If successful, this voyage could change the way that ocean research is done, as the researchers can now stay at home and focus on processing the data and writing experiments, rather then managing the ship and worrying about the ocean.
Above: the concept sketch for the Mayflower autonomous ship.
Science Scholars 2019 