The boat without a crew - 28th May 2021

An international team of experts has come together to build a driverless ship. Mayflower 400 is the first boat of its kind. It's named after the ship which carried settlers from England to America.

The scientists, engineers and sailors who planned Mayflower 400 had expected it to sail last year. However, the pandemic made it impossible to prepare.

Since then, the ship has gone through safety trials ahead of its transatlantic journey. Engineering student Meirwen Jenking-Rees, who is assisting the team, describes the challenges they face.

Meirwen Jenking-Rees: "It's possible. It's just a bit of a struggle that we're still in the, in the trials area. So we haven't been able to go out in full choppy ocean waves, wind, rain. The full sort of worst case scenario stuff hasn't been achieved yet."

Mayflower 400 operates using artificial intelligence. It receives data from cameras and sensors, follows rules and responds to weather conditions. In an emergency, the team on land can take control.

The boat was trained to recognise other ships from thousands of photos as software engineer Oliver Thompson explains.

Oliver Thompson: "We don't have to show her every single boat she'll ever see for her to know that that particular boat is a boat. There are common features, and that applies to the decisions she makes as well."

As there is no one on board, the ship is covered in solar panels. These power everything inside the boat, which is packed with sensitive equipment to measure sea level and chemical content. Other instruments use sound to track whale populations.

These features give Mayflower 400 an advantage over traditional research ships. It collects information more efficiently, which makes environmental data more affordable. The project's director, Brett Phaneuf, is focused on improving our understanding of the planet.

Brett Phaneuf: "And then if we can do that - remaining safe in terms of other people on the ocean, other ships on the ocean and also dealing with whatever the ocean can throw at us from a weather perspective - the AI systems can do that. That's a huge move forward into reducing the cost of going to sea to collect the data that we need to understand the planet better. And that's really the ultimate goal."