Self-Driving Boats: The Future of Navigating the High Seas

What if the all the ships that navigated our vast oceans could navigate, chart a course, and think for themselves—without any human input?

This is the future the Sea Machines Robotics in Boston, Massachusetts envisions—and it’ll be here even before driverless cars become mainstream. Motherboard set sail on Sea Machines’ boats to see exactly what the future of our automated seas will look like.

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[miked]

Imagine this. You've been stranded on an empty island for years, you finally gather enough resources to make a raft and head out to sea to find your way back to civilization. You have been adrift now for several days and awaken to the sound of motors. You see in the distance a yellow boat. Frantically, you wave and shout and jump. The boat swerves around you and continues on at full speed. RIP Chuck Noland lol

[Silverbugle]

These type of systems have been around for a while... I worked off shore for a year, and Siemens outfitted our supply boat with remote actuators, satellite data connections, cameras in the wheelhouse and engine rooms, AIS hard connect (meaning the ais data was fed to the automation computers, radar hard connections, remote rudder position sensors, etc...
All of this information was fed to the home office and they could take over control of the boat at anytime. It was mostly designed in the event the crew was incapacitated or if the boat were taken over in a hostage situation. (Understand, we were usually carrying over 40, 000 gallons of methanol, diesel, or JP4)
My boat was over 30 years old and was being retro fit with all these systems to make it safer. Testing was really cool. We piloted out to the middle of the Gulf where there was no traffic, shut everything Dow, and let go of ALL duties. It was kinda cool to watch from the engine room as valves moved themselves, air actuators pressurized themselves, and the rudders started moving on their own (with captain standing next to us in the engine room arms folded). Obviously, seen the boat work on auto pilot before, but I hadn't seen it come to life on it's on.

[yungjoemighty]

ro, ro, ro, your bot, gently down the data stream

[RichardGetzPhotography]

Avoiding a 30' boat is great, but what about a dinghy or debris or a reef?

[CrusadingJello]

Imagine if we had sea posts in certain high-risk areas for ships, with some autonymous ships that would occassionally be sent out, or deployed on purpose to check if any ships in the vicinity need help. That would be awesome. Especially if they had a remote-control function, like small arms underneath that could clear debris from under another boat if need me, by a human operator.

[mudpuddle]

With this technology I wont have to go fishing anymore. The boat can go by itself while I stay home and mow the lawn. Hey... wait a minute!

[jonasfriisjespersen]

Even though the automation technology is available, there are so many factors that could make crewless ships irrelevant or too cost inefficient such as:
1) Ethics: Who is responsible if a high seas drone ship sails past someone in distress? Who is responsible in the case of collision?
2) Redundancy: What happens if the ship loses its satellite connection? What if the radar breaks down? (This happens more often than you think)
3) Piracy: Assuming that the ship is carrying valuable goods, how will you protect these in the case of an attack? What about insurance?
In a military sense, automation could never be the only choice.

[philg]

Being a pirate will never be the same

[Asdfghjkl-lsor]

No Nike would just increase profit maybe saying that their software is expensive

[GeNiTaliA]

We are no way near full autonomous ships. No way anyone are willing to let their billion $ cargo across the atlantic (or any sea for that sake) without a crew. You don't spend 1 day at sea without something that would require a humans hand or logic.

[pandaDotDragon]

but... but... with this system we will never have the opportunity again to see a Norwegian frigate sunk by a random oil tanker ^^'

[victorsinha]

solving a problem that does not exist....well done!

[joshuaellis]

coming from a deck officer, WE DONT NEED THIS, THE IMPACT OF TAKING CREW OFF OF VESSELS COULD BE INCREDIBLY DETRIMENTAL TO THE INDUSTRY

[GenericInternetter]

The navigation of a ship is important, but one of the easiest tasks involved in managing a ship at sea.
There is so much more to captaining a ship, from maintenance, to supply, to weight distribution, to following all the regulations when leaving/entering port, and much more.
Steering the ship automatically is trivial in comparison. Focusing on this makes it seem like there wasn't much more to it than that.

[myFailedProductions]

Last year UT Austin figured out how to "control" autonomous boats via faked GPS signals. I wonder if they have any plan to prevent that.

[RomainSandt]

Awesome, but for me it opens more questions than anything. It has more problem than cars to overcome, really depends on what task we expect a boat to do by itself, and to what type of boat you want to fit with this. A big problem for example, can it figure out when to apply power in waves, can it calculate the course to follow with current? This prototype is not that big and faces those problems.

[Shakalkg]

self driving cars, self driving trucks, self driving boats, self driving everything. the age of manual labor is coming to an end

[MrRiory]

I do wonder how many sensors you need for boat to be fully autonomous. Like propeller stalling due to entanglement or hull breach on debree. Probably separate repair and refuel boats will be needed to that field support is possible. That would be a cool future :)

[adventureswithfrodo]

Boats a have had autotonomy probable the longest of any transportation. Autotonomy is replacement.this is a very cool idea, the easiest form to impliment.

[gimmie]

so this is autohelm with collision avoidance but it doesn't look like it will avoid rubbish, ropes, and other non-AIS or non-radar obstacles. For reference most boats already have autohelm which when you can set a course and it automatically follows the set course, it will also set alarms if it thinks it is on course for a collision with another boat on AIS (not every boat is registered on AIS but all big ones are) so with autohelm you just need to keep an eye out for smaller non-AIS boats, rubbish and respond to AIS alarms so all this does is respond to AIS alarms which isn't that big of an upgrade imo. Autohelm is already in loads of boats from small 30ft sailing yachts all the way up to the much larger boats better auto helms have more features but the standard is setting a compass heading and it will stay on it