Recently on May 15, the world's first autonomous ship - the Mayflower 400 bobs gently in a light swell as it stops its engines in Plymouth Sound, off England's southwest coast. On its journey, the vessel covered in solar panels will study marine pollution and analyse plastic in the water, as well as track aquatic mammals on its journey. This will also allow scientists to expand the area they can observe by this ship, as 80% of the underwater world remains unexplored by humans.
The contribution of this innovative ship is involved by several nations including India, Switzerland and the United States, with the destination to Plymouth, Massachusetts in the United States, which happens to be the same voyage made by English pilgrims on the original "Mayflower" ship in 1620 at that time.
Having a ship without people on board but controlled by AI and the team who monitor the ship 24 hours a day from England, ready to intervene remotely in case of danger. The AI captain in this ship was trained with hundreds of hours of audio data to detect the presence of marine mammals, recognise the marine mammals, analyse the chemical composition of the water, measure sea levels and collect samples of microplastics, by the technique called Supervised Learning. By running a number of scenarios, the ship can learn from that. The ship is automated from the robotic rudder that steers it to the diesel generator that supplements its solar power to get it going. The automated vessel uses its eyes and ears, a sophisticated system of six cameras and radar to continue learning on its own. Now we have already experienced automated cars and ships, let’s see what more excitement humans will invent next.