IBM has joined the effort to build an unmanned, fully-autonomous ship that will cross the Atlantic on the fourth centenary of the original Mayflower voyage in September 2020.

The Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) will use IBM AI, its most powerful servers, cloud and edge computing technologies to navigate autonomously and avoid ocean hazards as it makes its way from Plymouth, England to Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The autonomous ship is being developed by an international consortium of partners led by marine research organisation ProMare.

If successful, the Mayflower will be one of the first self-navigating, full-sized vessels to cross the Atlantic Ocean and is intended to open the door to a new era of autonomous research ships.

“Putting a research ship to sea can cost tens of thousands of dollars or pounds a day and is limited by how much time people can spend onboard – a prohibitive factor for many of today’s marine scientific missions,” said Brett Phaneuf, a Founding Board Member of ProMare and Co-Director of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship project. “With this project, we are pioneering a cost-effective and flexible platform for gathering data that will help safeguard the health of the ocean and the industries it supports.”

The vessel will carry three research pods containing an array of sensors and scientific instrumentation that scientists will use to advance understanding in a number of vital areas such as maritime cybersecurity, marine mammal monitoring, sea level mapping and ocean plastics. The work will be coordinated by the University of Plymouth, UK, a specialist in marine and maritime research, with support from IBM and ProMare.

The University of Plymouth – an authority in microplastics – will lead research to advance understanding about plastics in the ocean, analysing water samples from MAS as it sails across the Atlantic to understand more about the origin, distribution and potential impact of microplastics in the ocean.

According to Professor Richard Thompson, Director of the Marine Institute, University of Plymouth, “microplastics present a substantial challenge to our oceans. 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 be responsible for the use of virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies in the MAS mission. Birmingham’s Human Interface Technologies (HIT) Team is leading the development of a Mixed Reality Telepresence Science Station which will allow school children and members of the public around the world to experience the transatlantic mission.

IBM PowerAI Vision technology will run on IBM Power Systems accelerated servers, the technology used by IBM’s most powerful supercomputers, which will provide the platform for building deep learning models capable of recognising navigation hazards which come into view in MAS’s on-board video cameras. Trained on real data and images from the Plymouth Sound in the UK, MAS will be capable of recognising hazards such as buoys, debris and other ships and will have constant situational awareness thanks to RADAR, AIS (Automated Identification Systems) and LIDAR.

When a hazard is detected, MAS will use IBM’s Operational Decision Manager software to help decide autonomously whether to change course or, in case of emergencies, speed out of the way drawing additional power from its on-board back-up generator. Fusing data from nautical maps, sensors and weather forecasts, MAS will be able to determine the optimal path and speed it should take across the Atlantic.

During the voyage, edge devices will collect and analyse ship data and store it locally. When connectivity is available, it will be uploaded to edge nodes located onshore. 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.

The hull of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship is currently being constructed and outfitted in Gdansk, Poland by Aluship Technology, before being transported to Plymouth, UK later this year.

Andy Stanford-Clark, Chief Technology Officer, IBM UK & Ireland, said: “IBM helped put man on the moon and is excited by the challenge of using advanced technologies to cross and research our deepest oceans. By providing the brains for the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, we are pushing the boundaries of science and autonomous technologies to address critical environmental issues.”