Surely the name sounds familiar to you Mayflower, a maritime voyage that is now 400 years old, that is, dating from 1620. Now, that name has been recovered by IBM to name a project that is underway and which will begin testing from May , with a trip planned for September 16, 2020.
IBM wants to create an autonomous ship so that future sea voyages will be like this. This would be the first complete and unmanned that could cross the Atlantic from a port in Playmouth in the United Kingdom to Massachusetts. In doing so, it would enter a succulent multi-billion dollar market to change the naval future.
And what does this have to do with Linux or open source? Well the truth is that it has a lot to do, from the use of open source databases, even the operating system that will command this ship, and that is none other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You already know that IBM has bought Red Hat, so it's no wonder they use this system for their Mayflower project.
If you want to know more details about this autonomous boat, here are some of the technical characteristics highlights:
- Complex system IA that IBM has been developing and feeding its algorithms with models so you can make the decisions you need to sail the seas without the need for a flesh-and-blood captain. They have used over a million nautical images collected by Plymouth Sound Bay cameras and a large amount of data stored in their open source databases.
- How computational brain has a processor IBMPOWER AC922 for machine learning.
- In addition, you will use computer vision technology IBM Power AI Vision. It is capable of independently detecting and classifying other sighted boats, marine buoys, obstacles, breakwaters, etc.
- El bandwidth During the journey across the Atlantic it will not be very high, although it will use connectivity for the edge computing it uses.
- The operating system, as I said, will be based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
- It has multiple Xavier NVIDIA devices on board, to make it more powerful and intelligent.
- Rules management system IBM ODM (Operational Decision Manager) so that it can autonomously follow the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea (COLREG), as estimated by the International Convention for the Safety of Human Life at Sea (SOLAS).
- Radar with the ability to detect dangers at 4 km.
- Protection against cyber threats.
- AIS or Automatic Identification System to receive information on the class, speed, weight, load, etc., of ships.
- System GPS for navigation. This way the AI will know your exact location, course, speed and course at all times.
- The Weather Company It will provide meteorological data and state of the sea by satellite.
- Embedded to evaluate the state of the sea, waves, water depth by fatometer, and others to give information on the load, energy, consumption, etc.