The human-devoid AI-powered Saildrone Surveyor ship just made it to Hawaii from SF A human-free autonomous boat known as the Saildrone Surveyor has successfully sailed from San Francisco to Hawaii to cross the Pacific Ocean while mapping the topography of the seabed, an achievement made less than a month after a similar IBM-powered boat failed. The Saildrone Surveyor, 22 metres long and and weighing 12,700 …
There is a mechanism that sets a wingsail at the optimum angle to obtain the maximum drive from the wind. Combine that with the hydrofoil on a surfboard the lad in Puerto Rico is having fun with some mechanism (underwater whistle) to warn fish and cetaceans something is coming up fast (to be polite and also not to flip over them) and you may have some seriously efficient sea taxis.
Stick the wingsail and mechanism on a ski lift and you have a very cheap power source!
I think I would have a lot more confidence in an autonomous sea taxi than in an autonomous land taxi.
If the sea is calm, you've got plenty of warning if something is coming and I'm sure the programming can handle that (aside from the fact that it would be using radar).
And if the sea is not calm, I won't be on it, so . . .
Well the birds sure appreciated the rest station on the sail's outrigger (rudder?)
But they really should'a had at least a small pirate flag at the top. Or... did the other side of the sail have a painting discouraging boarders?
I bet the cartels are already mulling that option. A small drone with some solar panels and batteries hooked up to a rudder and a satnav. Assuming it can charge and make more progress than the tides or current then it doesn't have to be fast, it just has to get to where it's going.
"A human-free autonomous boat known as the Saildrone Surveyor has successfully sailed from San Francisco to Hawaii to cross the Pacific Ocean while mapping the topography of the seabed, an achievement made less than a month after a similar IBM-powered boat failed."
That failure wouldn't have anything to do with IBM's current email woes would it?
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/30/ibm_email_outage/
Whereas the Saildrone Surveyor is "powered by wind and solar energy"...
The Promare Mayflower is powered by "solar power", with copious amounts of hyperbole from IBM providing additional support and power:
"Able to scan the horizon for possible hazards, make informed decisions and change its course based on a fusion of live data, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship has more in common with a modern bank than its 17th century namesake," Andy Stanford-Clark, CTO of IBM UK & Ireland, said this week.
"With its ability to keep running in the face of the most challenging conditions, this small ship is a microcosm for every aspiring 21st century business."
Link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8874589/Fresh-hopes-MH370-six-years-plane-went-missing-sparked-fascinating-mysteries.html
Where is it? Is this the best, cheapest way to find out?
It's ONLY FIVE YEARS since it the plane disappeared!! I keep hearing on El Reg about "advanced technology"........and a Boeing 777 goes off the grid.....and five years later no one knows what happened......how can this be "advanced technology"??
we have mapped the Moon more than our planet's deep oceans.
I've heard variations of this claim frequently on the internet, but the Earth's ocean floors were thoroughly mapped by 1977. There are dozens of oceanographic institutes, militaries, and oil companies mapping and studying the seafloor for purposes ranging from primary science to profits. From the Antarctic ocean seafloor to the the Arctic Ocean seafloor, we've got the seafloors mapped in depth. (sorry)
So, what definition is being used when it's claimed that we've mapped more of the moon's surface than Earth's seafloors?
I think it's the definition and visibility they're talking about. Vast swathes of the ocean floor are only mapped to very course resolution and most of it has never been seen. In that respect, we know way more about the surface of the Moon than the sea floor.
To see one example of this: Open Google Maps, in satellite mode, go to Australia and zoom so Australia is roughly the size of your screen. Now look at the oceans to the south-west or south of Australia. You'll see a bunch of lines crossing them. Zoom in on the edge of one of those lines.
Each line is where a ship has gone through the ocean with the right equipment to measure the depths in high resolution. So you'll see the high resolution data there. The rest of the ocean is "blurry", because there is only low-resolution satellite data available.
They use sonar that scans a distance either side of the ship's course, hence the width of the lines.
South west of Australia is a good place to look, because of the search for MH370. They did a lot of mapping looking for the remains of the aircraft on the seafloor, and it looks like that data ended up on Google. (Looking for an aircraft underwater is done by measuring the sea depth at high-resolution, then looking for an aircraft-shaped bump in that data. If something looks possible, they send down an ROV to take images of it). You can clearly see many of the rectangular search areas.
"Each line is where a ship has gone through the ocean with the right equipment to measure the depths in high resolution. So you'll see the high resolution data there. The rest of the ocean is "blurry", because there is only low-resolution satellite data available."
Thanks! I'd never noticed that before. It makes it look a bit weird. The extra level of detail makes it look like a tracked vehicle, albeit an enormous one, has driven across an otherwise smooth seabed. I bet there are conspiracy theories already about the "roads" across the seabed and alien underwater mining operations :-)
I think it's the definition and visibility they're talking about.
And that's fine if that's the author's point. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is mapping the moon to 18-inches resolution such that that foot trails of astronauts are visible. LRO's fantastic work mildly complicates moon landing deniers' conspiracy theories.
But then you get claims like "only 5% of the oceans have been mapped" that are taken for granted, even though every inch (or, well, tens of square kilometers) of the sea floor have been mapped since 1977.
Hence my curiosity about the ambiguity.
“We have solved the challenge of reliable long-range, large-payload remote maritime operations. Offshore survey can now be accomplished without a large ship and crew; this completely changes operational economics for our customers.”
No, you've done one long trip, no doubt at the most favourable weather conditions you could plan for. "Solved" is when you can demonstrate multiple uneventful trips in all expected weather conditions. Other than that, good on them for a great achievement, but guys, don't oversell yourselves before you are certain.
There are plenty of single-handed sailors who have sailed many thousands of miles over many years (and are doing so right now). The decisions a single-hander needs to make and the tasks they need to carry out over a long passage are not particularly complex or difficult. With the addition of hardware that can pull on ropes and reef sails etc., automation would seem to me to be a pretty trivial task. Most small yachts these days have enough solar and/or wind generators to supply all their electrical needs. For at least a third of the time the sailor is asleep and the yacht is thus sailing itself anyway, with only AIS and/or radar watching for conflicting traffic. In case of an alert, conflict resolution involves pretty simple algorithms.
The only time a human is really needed is when entering or leaving a port or harbour - which I suspect the autonomous vessel would not do by itself. GPS solves the problem of navigation, which would otherwise be very difficult to automate. An unmanned vessel would not have to carry food or water, nor need energy for fridge, freezer or microwave oven, and so these could be replaced by the survey equipment.
Perhaps a human would be needed to look at the weather forecasts and make routing decisions to be fed to the automated vessel via radio, but OTOH it would also not be that difficult to write a program to make course decisions based on the contents of GRIB files automatically downloaded each day together with actual measurements of wind & sea state - this would be no more difficult than a program that calculates the route in a car sat-nav system which gets real-time updates of traffic congestion that it takes into account.
By far the biggest issue would be dealing with equipment failure. With no human crew, something as simple as a line coming out of a self-tailing electric winch or getting tangled in a cleat would be a show-stopper, so you'd have to redesign some basic equipment in a way that such things couldn't happen.
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