Friday, January 8, 2021

Oh, patents! Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS)

Copyright Françoise Herrmann 

The fact that the COVID 19 pandemic put a law-enforced damper on all forms of celebration, hardly stopped the march of amazing inventions. Whether the canceled celebrations were individual (for weddings and graduations), or collective (for Beethoven’s 200th anniversary and the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower voyage to America), some awe-inspiring inventions still came together, in a unique spirit of collaboration 

The Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) was one such awesome, large scale, maritime project, arising in a partnership between Promare (a British marine-research, non-profit, organization), IBM Corporation, the Universities of Plymouth and Birmingham in the UK, together with a consortium of global partners, including shipbuilders, submarine designers, software engineers, AI experts, robotics engineers, oceanographers and university researchers stationed, on land, around the world. Bringing together hundreds of IBM-patented technologies, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) project largely unfolded away from the limelight, even if such a grand project was intended to deeply, sustainably, and durably, transform ocean science (IBM News Room (1)). A science that includes such domains as: sea-level mapping, ocean microplastics analysis, marine mammal monitoring, marine overexploitation tracking, maritime cybersecurity, and climate change research. Not to mention, the potential for eventually increasing the fleet of autonomous ships. More autonomous ships that could, for example, respond to, and prevent, the plight of hundreds of boat people, perishing at sea, in the Mediterranean. Alternatively, more autonomous ships that could expand maritime trade in unprecedented ways, driving down the costs of building vessels, equipped for much safer sea navigation in turbulent waters.

The Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) is a robotic trimaran vessel with a fully autonomous navigation system. Indeed, the MAS was designed to sail the rough seas of the Atlantic ocean without a captain, without a crew, and without fossil fuel, powered 100% by solar and wind energy (IBM Industries, 2020).

In the Youtube video below, titled Entering the mind of the Mayflower, the AI skipper voiceover is heard, steering the ship’s direction across the sea.

The MAS was officially launched on September 16th 2020, in the Atlantic Ocean (IBM staff, 2020). After six months of testing at sea, the ship’s maiden, transatlantic voyage, scheduled to depart from Plymouth UK, to Plymouth, MA (in the US), on April 19th 2021, will retrace the historic journey of the 17th-century Mayflower. A historic journey, which set sail on September 16th 1620, bringing one hundred settlers, some fleeing religious persecution, others seeking adventure, from the UK, to the new world colonies of the Americas.

Four hundred years later, the MAS quietly commemorated the Mayflower's journey in 1620, putting to test some of the most sophisticated IBM AI and edge computing technologies for autonomous navigation, in the extreme environment of the Atlantic Ocean (IBM Newroom (2)). A novel form of navigation, befitting a historic journey, which will evidently also be paving the way for the next 400 years of seafaring, using state of the art AI, shipbuilding, and electronics (IBM Industries, 2020).

Without a crew, and consequently no need for sleeping quarters, food storage or other amenities, all of the interior space of the ship is dedicated to scientific experiments. The ship is equipped with research pods, designed by the University of Plymouth (UK) to collect data on marine life and the health of the Atlantic (Cardwell, 2020). Otherwise, The University of Birmingham (UK), developed both a commemorative VR reconstruction of the original Mayflower, and an AR (Augmented Reality) platform for complex VR navigational animation sequences, in collaboration with project partners, such as MSubs, a company that worked on the design and construction of the MAS, in Plymouth, UK.

In 2021, at the Computer Electronics Show (CES), happening online this year, on Jan 11-14, the IBM-Promare Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) project will also be competing for a Best of Innovation Award, in the category of Vehicle Intelligence and Transportation.

Stay tuned at mas400.com for when the MAS sets out on its first autonomous transatlantic journey to the US, on April 19th, 2021!

References

Cardwell, D. (2020) Feature Story: Mayflower Captains 400 years apart (1620-2020). https://newsroom.ibm.com/Mayflower-Captains-400-Years-Apart

CES 2021 https://digital.ces.tech/home

IBM Industries (December 2020) – The Unchartered: Autonomous ship project (8-part docuseries) https://www.ibm.com/industries/federal/autonomous-ship

IBM Newsroom (1) –The Mayflower autonomous ship. https://newsroom.ibm.com/then-and-now 

IBM Newsroom (2) -Sea Trials begin for Mayflower Autonomous Ship's AI-Captain. 

Mayflower Autonomous Ship https://mas400.com/ 



University of Plymouth (UK) - An unmanned voyage in the wake of the Mayflower.

University of Birmingham (UK) - VR experts create virtual boarding for Mayflower 400th anniversary.
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