Mayflower transported some of the first European settlers across the Atlantic Ocean to North America 400 years ago this year.
To commemorate the anniversary, another ship recreates that voyage with the help artificial intelligence.
“We don’t know how it’s going to go. Will it cross the Atlantic?” software engineer and emerging technology specialist Rosie Lickorish told Roxana Saberi of CBS News. “Fingers crossed that he has his first successful journey.”
The ship, anchored in the port of Plymouth, England, will rely on the latest navigation technology when it goes to sea – but will not carry a crew or a captain.
“We have all kinds of cameras … We have global positioning systems on both sides,” said robotics expert Brett Phaneuf.
What it will not have, he said, is “people’s space.”
Instead, the ship will be guided by the artificial intelligence designed by IBM.
Phaneuf explained how the technology should work.
“They look at their own cameras like eyes, they look at the radar, they look at all sorts of other sensors,” he said. “Then he sets his own course and can deal with unique situations without any human input.”
These situations include meeting other ships during the voyage – something software engineer Ollie Thompson works hard to train the ship’s scheduler to recognize using more than a million different images.
“We simulate what she sees,” he said of the boat.
Developers are also setting the ship’s destination for Plymouth, Massachusetts, to resume the four-century-old Mayflower Passage.
The wooden merchant ship took 66 days to transport dozens of pilgrims across the Atlantic.
A replica sailed from England to Massachusetts in the 1950s and is still docked there to this day.
But Phenauf, who grew up near Plymouth, Massachusetts, wanted to mark Mayflower’s famous past by looking instead.
“I thought, well, we should build a talking ship in the next 400 years. What will the shipping company look like then, unlike what it looked like 400 years ago,” he said.
An international team has transformed its vision into the autonomous Mayflower ship with solar and wind energy. Its mission is to learn more about Earth’s oceans by collecting data on plastic pollution, water heating and their effects on marine life.
Software developer Rosie Likorish said the autonomous ship is a more cost-effective way to conduct research.
“It’s very expensive at the moment for scientists to actually go on these research missions,” she said. “So having autonomous ships like the Mayflower Autonomous Ship is a very important step and allows us to get out of these dangerous places and learn a lot more.”
In addition to reducing costs, the lack of a crew means that the size of the ship can be compact and there are no worries about someone getting sick or injured.
Brett Phenauf said his biggest concern would be if something broke.
If the boat capsizes, the team intends to track it by satellite and save it.
And if the unknown journey succeeds, Phenauf says he would commemorate history as he charts a new path.
He said: “I want people to look back 400 years from now and think about how different this was from what other people were doing.”