Information about Plymouth Sound to bookend milestone first Transatlantic autonomous vessel crossing
The UK Hydrographic Office has announced its support of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) project, which will see one of the first Transatlantic crossings of a fully autonomous vessel. Important geospatial data from the UKHO will support the first part of the vessel’s journey from Plymouth UK to Plymouth Massachusetts this spring.
Built by marine research non-profit with support from IBM, MAS is designed to provide scientists with a flexible and cost-effective platform for collecting critical data about the health of the ocean and further the technological development of marine autonomous systems.
The data provided by the UKHO spans high resolution gridded bathymetry, tidal height and surface current data, and geospatial restriction and constraints data for the Plymouth Sound region, providing MAS with a definitive view of the seabed in UK coastal waters.
The voyage is expected to commence in spring 2021 and take approximately 3 weeks. As a data partner to the project, the UKHO also facilitated meetings with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to enable the MAS team to secure similar data for the approach to its final destination. The data from the UKHO will complement updates from IBM’s The Weather Company, which include 500m resolution weather forecasts and predictions along the route in order to help MAS avoid running into severe weather.
With no human captain or onboard crew, MAS uses the power of AI and automation to traverse the ocean in its quest for data and discovery. The ship’s AI captain performs a similar role to a human captain. By assimilating data from a number of sources, the AI captain constantly assesses the ship’s route, status and mission, and makes decisions about what to do next.
To support the project, the UKHO is working with the MAS team in solving the challenge of so-called ‘machine-readable data’. This is a key challenge that the maritime industry must overcome to enable autonomous or semi-autonomous vessels at scale; by creating data that is suitable for machines, rather than basing the technology on data sets made for humans or current Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs).
Mark Casey, Head of Research, Design & Innovation at the UK Hydrographic Office, said:
Brett Phaneuf, Director for the Mayflower Autonomous Ship project, said,
Matthew Ratsey, Managing Director of Marine AI, added:
Colleen Roche, Northeast Navigation Manager at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), commented:
For more information on the Mayflower Autonomous Ship project, please visit the IBM website.
To follow MAS and get live data updates, please visit the MAS website.