A crewless ship aiming to recreate the Atlantic crossing of the Mayflower, 400 years in the past this month, will set sail from Plymouth harbour on Wednesday.
The Mayflower Autonomous Ship will gather knowledge on the ocean and marine life, together with sampling for plastics.
Captained by a robotic educated by IBM-designed synthetic intelligence, utilizing one million nautical photos, it’s going to full six months of sea trials earlier than its two-week Atlantic crossing.
The 1620 crossing took over two months.
The unique Mayflower, a 100ft (30m) triple-masted wood vessel with canvas sails and a most velocity of three knots (6km/h), carried 102 passengers and a crew of about 30 from Plymouth to Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
picture copyrightIBM
The 2020 model, manufactured from aluminium composite, by non-profit organisation ProMare, is a trimaran fuelled by solar-powered batteries, with a back-up diesel generator and a most velocity of 10 knots.
And as an alternative of passengers and crew, it’s full of know-how, together with:
- lidar
- radar
- cameras
- international positioning system (GPS) antennas
“Capable of scan the horizon for potential hazards, make knowledgeable selections and alter its course based mostly on a fusion of dwell knowledge, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship has extra in frequent with a contemporary financial institution than its 17th-Century namesake,” IBM chief know-how officer Andy Stanford-Clark mentioned.
website reveals the ship’s present location and standing, the course of its voyage and samples from its analysis pods.
