The Mayflower 400 years ago this year some of the first European settlers transported across the Atlantic to North America.
To commemorate the anniversary, another ship reconstructs that journey with the help of artificial intelligence.
‘We don’t know how it will go. Will it happen to the Atlantic? ‘ Software engineer and emerging technology specialist Rosie Lickorish told CBS News’ Roxana Saberi. “Fingers crossed that it has a successful maiden voyage.”
The vessel, docked in the port of Plymouth, England, will rely on the latest in navigation technology when it goes out to sea, but will not carry a crew or captain.
“We have all kinds of cameras … We have global positioning systems on both sides,” said robotics expert Brett Phaneuf.
What it won’t have, he said, is “room for people.”
Instead, the ship will be guided by artificial intelligence designed by IBM.
Phaneuf explained how the technology should work.
“It looks at its own cameras like eyes, it looks at the radar, it looks at all kinds of other sensors,” he said. “Then it sets its own course and can deal with unique situations without human intervention.”
Those situations include encountering other ships on the voyage – something software engineer Ollie Thompson is hard at work learning to recognize the ship’s programming using over a million different images.
“We’re simulating what she sees,” he said of the boat.
Programmers also pinpoint the ship’s destination in Plymouth, Massachusetts, to track the Mayflowers’ four centuries-old 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.
But Phenauf, who grew up near Plymouth, Massachusetts, wanted to highlight the Mayflowers’ famous past by looking ahead.
“I thought we had to build a ship that would appeal to the next 400 years. What the maritime company will look like then, as opposed to what it looked like 400 years ago,” he said.
An international team turned its vision into the solar and wind powered Mayflower autonomous vessel. Its mission is to learn more about Earth’s oceans by collecting data on plastic pollution, warming waters and their effects on marine life.
Software developer Rosie Likorish said the autonomous vessel is a more cost-effective way to conduct the research.
“It is currently very expensive for scientists to actually undertake these fact-finding missions,” she said. “So having autonomous ships like the Mayflower Autonomous Ship is a really important step and actually allows us to go to these dangerous places and learn a lot more.”
In addition to cost savings, the lack of a crew means that the size of the vessel can be compact and there is no concern of anyone getting sick or injured.
Brett Phenauf said his main concern would be if anything broke.
If the boat capsized, the team plans to track and rescue it via satellite.
And if the unknown journey succeeds, Phenauf says it would commemorate history while also charting a new path.
He said, “I want people to look back on these 400 years from now and think about how different this was from what other people did.”