A big autonomous ship crossed the Atlantic

"The Mayflower, an unmanned robotic ship that recreated English colonists' 1620 voyage on the Mayflower, reached the coast of Massachusetts on Thursday.

 

More than 400 years after the colonists' historic voyage from England, the newly autonomous ship Mayflower rendezvoused with an escort off the coast of Massachusetts, was towed to Plymouth Harbor under U.S. Coast Guard regulations and docked near an exact replica of the original Mayflower.

 

 

The 15 m long trimaran controlled by artificial intelligence technology had neither a captain nor a helmsman; there were no people in it at all.

 

The first attempt of a solar-powered ship to cross the Atlantic in 2021 was accompanied by technical problems and eventually the ship had to be returned to its port - Plymouth, England, from which the Pilgrim Fathers set sail in 1620.

 

In April, the autonomous ship set sail again from southwest England, but mechanical problems diverted it to Portugal's Azores and then to Canada.

 

"With nobody on board, obviously you can't do the necessary mechanical, physical repairs," said Rob High, head of software at International Business Machines (IBM), the world's leading computer services provider, which is helping with the project.

 

"It's also part of the learning process," he added.

 

The ship left Halifax, Nova Scotia on Monday and successfully reached the port of Plymouth in four days.

 

Marine research nonprofit ProMare built the ship with IBM and used it to collect data on whales, microplastic pollution, and other research.

 

Small experimental autonomous ships have crossed the Atlantic before, but the Mayflower is said to be the first ship of its size to do so.

 

Completing the voyage "means we can start analyzing the ship's voyage data" and the operation of the AI ​​system, High said. According to him, the prospect of such unmanned ships constantly sailing means that it will be easier to collect information on "all the things that scientists care about"."