According to a report by BBC, IBM has developed an autonomous ship, which is getting ready to sail across the Atlantic Ocean in the coming weeks. The ship is called as Mayflower Autonomous Ship, which was completed and launched in September, it is an artificially intelligent and solar-powered marine research craft that will sail across oceans to gather data on the environment. The IBM-powered ship is ready to make the big journey from the UK to the US, after going through months of trials.
Mayflower Autonomous Ship has spent the last few months in sea trials and several research missions to prepare for the big journey from Plymouth, England, to Massachusetts in the US. It’ll work in co-operation with scientists and other autonomous crafts to collect information on matters concerning global warming, micro-plastic pollution, and marine mammal conservation.
Mayflower Autonomous Ship houses software engineering from IBM, led by a team in Plymouth, utilizes radar and GPS to navigate, along with six cameras attached to the mast serve as the ship’s vision by sending the feed into an AI image recognition system that helps to avoid oncoming ships and other hazards. The journey to the US is predicted to take about 12 days.
There is no information regarding the sail date of the ship. But a webpage for the ship states that the ship is in final testing and fitted with all the science equipment and that a departure window for the journey is still being worked out.