Weather permitting, April 19th will see a ship named the Mayflower leave Plymouth harbour and embark upon a trans-Atlantic crossing. With a fair wind, the ship is expected to make land after about three weeks, arriving at another Plymouth – this one in Massachusetts.
The crossing will mark the 400th anniversary of another Mayflower trip across the Atlantic and follow roughly the same route. One that took place in 1620, carrying around 130 passengers, or Pilgrims, embarking on a new life in the New World.
The 2021 Mayflower is actually the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS). And it will make its crossing, taking around 7 weeks less than the original 10-week journey, without the involvement of any human crew at all. Navigating shipping lanes at a speed of around 10 knots (11.5 mph) without colliding with other vessels, high winds and waves and the other perils of the deep Atlantic will all be handled by robotics powered by cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The MAS’s journey, if successful, will be the first time a fully autonomous vessel has crossed the Atlantic. The five-ton, 15 ft autonomous vessel’s journey started as a Plymouth city council proposal made in 2016 to recreate the original Mayflower’s crossing four centuries later.
The first proposal was to build a replica Mayflower using historical ship-building techniques. Then Brett Phaneuf, managing director of unmanned submarines maker M Subs urged the council to instead commemorate the past by looking to the future. Boston-born Phaneuf urged:
“Why don’t we do something that speaks to the next 400 years . . . not the last 400? Let’s take inspiration from that sort of event where people undertook a hazardous journey into the unknown.”
Phaneuf, who also happens to be a director of marine research charity ProMare, started to get in touch with his network to raise support for the endeavour. Computing giant IBM, a leader in AI technology, got involved. IBM created a rule management system of international shipping regulations that the vessel’s AI Captain would follow to avoid any collisions. And unexpected hazards such as floating debris are monitored for via cameras and sensors.
“The ship can understand how it’s moving, what’s around it . . . how its rudder is functioning, how its instruments are working and how much energy it has,” Phaneuf said. “It builds up a scene of what’s around it and then it makes decisions without us about how it should act to remain safe.”
MAS is mainly powered by renewable energy and uses a “solar-powered, hybrid-electric propulsion system” backed up by a diesel generator.
First planned for September last year, the modern-day Mayflower’s voyage of discovery was delayed by the pandemic. But despite the journey finally due to take place 401 years after the original, and lacking much of a send-off due to lockdown restrictions still in place, Mr Phaneuf is confident celebrations on the vessel’s arrival will make up for it:
“There’s going to be a party when it gets there,” he said. “I can tell you that.”
The full autonomous shipping technology stack includes radar and lidar – the same kind of laser-based hazard detection system used by many of those developing driverless cars. Cameras, a GPS system, weather sensors and a system that tracks nearby ships compete the system.
As well as the technology that will hopefully allow the MAS to navigate an ocean without human intervention, the vessel will also carry three research pods filled with scientific instruments that will conduct experiments throughout the voyage. Microphones on the hull will listen for whales, a “smart tongue” record the chemical composition of the ocean and a “robotic sampler” will collect water to check for microplastics.
IBM Research’s Rosie Lickorish, a software engineer and oceanographer, who is leading some of the experiments to be conducted comments:
“This is the next generation of ocean research. We are able to do a lot more on the vessel than we would have been able to do previously.”