Driverless vessels hit the waterways!

September 15, 2021

We’ve all read about autonomous trucks. Well, now autonomous boats are on the way!

In a milestone moment slated to prove that the world’s waterways are primed and ready for autonomous technology, Sea Machines Robotics, a leading developer of autonomous command and control systems for the maritime industry, has announced that it will embark on a 1 000 nautical mile autonomous and remotely commanded journey around Denmark later this month. (1 000 nautical miles are the equivalent of 1 150 regular road miles or 1 850 km on a road.)

The voyage – named the Machine Odyssey – will depart from Hamburg, Germany, on September 30, with full onboard vessel control managed by autonomous technology, while operating under the authority of commanding officers located in the United States.

The selected vessel, a modern ubiquitous tug designed and built by Damen Shipyards of the Netherlands, is named the Nellie Bly. It pays homage to the American journalist, industrialist, inventor and charity worker who was widely known for her ultra-bold and record-breaking solo trip around the world on boats and trains in 72 days. The project’s name, on the other hand, harks to Homer’s Odyssey. The poem is the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who wanders for 10 years, trying to get home to Greece after the Trojan War.

This voyage is intended to prove the many benefits of autonomous technology to the world – and specifically to the thousands of global companies that operate fleets of cargo ships, tugs, ferries and the many other types of commercial workboats.

At the helm will be the Sea Machines SM300 autonomy system. The SM300 is a comprehensive sensor-to-propeller autonomy system that uses advanced path-planning, obstacle avoidance replanning, vectored nautical chart data and dynamic domain perception to control a voyage from start to finish. The SM300 provides the remote human commanders with an active chart environment with live augmented overlays showing the mission, state of the vessel, situational awareness and environmental data, as well as real-time, vessel-born audio and video from many streaming cameras.

Michael Johnson, CEO of Sea Machines, has high aspirations for the voyage and indeed the technology. “Just as other land-based industries shift repetitive, manual drudgery from human to predictable robotic systems, our autonomous technology elevates humans from controller to commander with most of the direct continuous control effort being managed by technology.

“This recast human-technology relationship is the basis of a new era of at-sea operations and will give on-water industries the tools and capability to be much more competitive, end the erosion of high-value cargo to air and road, put more vessels on water, operate in better harmony with the natural ocean environment and deliver new products and services,” he predicts.

We wish them bon voyage!

Photography by Arie Boer, Marine Traffic 2