Led by marine research organization ProMare, a global consortium of partners is building an unmanned, fully-autonomous ship that will cross the Atlantic on the fourth centenary of the original Mayflower voyage in September 2020.

IBM has joined that consortium, and the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) will utilize IBM’s artificial intelligence (AI), most powerful servers, cloud and edge computing technologies to autonomously navigate and avoid ocean hazards as it travels from Plymouth, England to Plymouth, Massachusetts.

If the voyage proves successful, MAS will be one of the first self-navigating, full-sized vessels to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

“IBM helped put man on the moon and is excited by the challenge of using advanced technologies to cross and research our deepest oceans,” says Andy Stanford-Clark, chief technology officer, IBM UK & Ireland.

“By providing the brains for the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, we are pushing the boundaries of science and autonomous technologies to address critical environmental issues.”

MAS will carry three research pods that contain a variety of sensors and scientific instrumentation that will be used by scientists to advance their understanding in several critical areas such as maritime cybersecurity, marine mammal monitoring, sea level mapping and ocean plastics.

IBM and ProMare will support this work, which is being coordinated by the University of Plymouth, UK.

A global authority in microplastics, the University of Plymouth will lead research to advance understanding in the area of plastics in the ocean, and microplastics ending up in the food consumed by humans. The University of Plymouth will analyze water samples from MAS as it travels across the Atlantic to understand more about the origin, distribution and potential impact of microplastics in the ocean.

“Microplastics present a substantial challenge to our oceans,” Professor Richard Thompson, OBE, director of the Marine Institute, University of Plymouth. “Over 700 species come into contact with marine litter which is found from the poles to the equator, and estimates are that the quantity of plastic in the oceans will triple in the decade to 2025. The Mayflower Autonomous Ship gives us the opportunity to rethink how to collect data and further our understanding of this global issue.”

The UK's University of Birmingham will also be a part of this effort, as it will be responsible for the use of virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies in the MAS mission. A Mixed Reality Telepresence Science Station is being developed by Birmingham's Human Interface Technologies (HIT) Team, which will allow school children and members of the public around the world to experience the transatlantic mission.

The combination of IBM PowerAI Vision technology and IBM Power Systems accelerated servers will help ProMare build deep learning models that can recognize navigation hazards that come into view in MAS's on-board video cameras. MAS will be trained on real data and images from the Plymouth Sound in the UK, which will allow it to recognize a variety of hazards such as buoys, debris and other ships. Equipped with RADAR, Automated Identification Systems (AIS) and lidar, MAS will also have constant situational awareness.

MAS will use IBM's Operational Decision Manager software when it detects a hazard to decide autonomously whether to change course or, in case of emergencies, speed out of the way using extra power from its on-board back-up generator. Data from nautical maps, sensors and weather forecasts will be fused together to give MAS the ability to determine the optimal path and speed it should take across the Atlantic.

During the voyage, ship data will be collected, analyzed and stored locally using edge devices. That data will be uploaded to edge nodes located onshore when connectivity is available.

ProMare and IBM experts will update the deep learning models and push them out to the ship as required. The edge nodes are connected to IBM Cloud, where data is stored in IBM Cloud Object Storage.

Aluship Technology is currently constructing and outfitting the hull of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship in Gdansk, Poland. Once this is complete, the ship will be transported to Plymouth, UK later this year.