Back in 1620, the Mayflower, a ship from England transported about 130 people across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. As a token to celebrate its 400th anniversary, an autonomous Mayflower ship is being developed by a non-profit corporation named ProMare.
This new Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS)will not have any humanson-board. Instead, all the processes will be taken care of by IBM’s AI. The ship will rely on renewable energy sources (solar, wind) for its fuel needs. Solar panels are attached to charge the batteries equipped on the ship.
The ship is expected to reachtop speeds up to 20 knots(37km/h), which is a huge step up when compared to the original Mayflower’s 2.5 knots (4.5km/h).
Thanks to technical expertise from IBM, MAS will come with a variety of sensors including RADAR and LIDAR for avoiding obstacles. These sensors will work along with IBM’s PowerAI vision to make detections even more accurate.
IBM has plans to buildAR and VR based toolsfor the public to view and experience the voyage of MAS in collaboration with the Human Interface Technologies team of the University of Birmingham. However, we will have to wait until next year to see how that turns out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6iHZlkg6TQ
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