September 2021
THE MAYFLOWER AUTONOMOUS SHIP Cadet Radhika Kumari, B.Tech. Marine Engineering (1st year), Indian Maritime University (Erstwhile DMET/MERI) “Our future success is directly proportional to our ability to understand, adopt and integrate new technology into our work”.Sukant Ratnakar (Author) We all know the amount of effort and labour seafarers put in to bring out the best in everything. Taking technology into consideration, it is always there to reduce efforts and labour. So what if shipping gets an inoculation of technology in the greatest manner? Things turn autonomous, we get autonomous shipping. The concept of autonomous ships is already gaining popularity and the best example of this is the “Mayflower Autonomous Ship” (MAS), a research vessel designed by a marine research organization - ProMare. IBM powers MAS advanced technologies — which includes integrated shore-based and satellite networks. In 2017, IMO investigated the safety, security and environmentally sound operation of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) in IMO instruments. During May 2021 on its’ 103rd session, it carried out a regulatory scoping analysis to determine how MASS might be subject to regulation. The scoping exercise involved assessing a substantial number of IMO treaty instruments under the remit of the Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) which considered four degrees of autonomy: Degree One - crewed ship with automated decision-making processes, Degree Two - remotely controlled ship with
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crew, Degree Three - remotely controlled ship without crew, Degree Four- fully autonomous ship and identifying provisions that applied to MASS. MAS complies with Degree Four. It provides a safe, flexible and cost-effective way of gathering live oceanic data to conduct research, alert climate changes and promises to transform oceanography by working with ocean enthusiasts. MAS comes with three technological layers: sensory input, machine learning and analytics in real-time and a decision engine at sea with no physical human captain or onboard crew. It’s marine IBM’s computing systems, automation software and Red Hat Open-Source software support AI. The AI Captain is trained on over one million nautical images so it could recognize ships, debris, bridges, pieces of land and other hazards. AI Captain receives actionable data from onboard cameras, automatic identification system (AIS) and other
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