Unmanned Systems Technology 042 | Mayflower Autonomous Ship | Embedded Computing | ElevonX Sierra VTOL | UUVs insight | Flygas Engineering GAS418S | Ocean Business 2021 report | Electric motors | Priva Kompano

25 “Someone suggested re-making the original sailing vessel, but I knew an exact replica had already been made and sailed from England to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1957. I’d stood on the replica myself as a child, and I also felt it was a waste of resources and engineering to make a 17th century ship in the 21st century. “When asked what we should do instead, I said we should build an autonomous ship that leverages all the bleeding edges of technology in order to be capable of crossing the Atlantic by itself, and therefore make for an incredibly powerful asset in terms of low-cost, long- endurance ocean research. The original Mayflower represented a new beginning for the pilgrims, at very high risk to their lives; by comparison, the risk of starting a venture to bring a new beginning to the way we study and appreciate the condition of our oceans was far lower.” The proposal was well-received, which helped Phaneuf quickly build a team of companies, research organisations, non-profits and individuals to pursue the development of the USV he envisioned and ensure a well-rounded approach to producing a tool that would enable large- scale climatological, meteorological and oceanographic research strands. These partnerships (particularly that with IBM) have also led to the AI and machine learning techniques that have been vital to ensuring the craft’s long-term survivability, as well as the legal advice needed to navigate the regulatory framework dictating what the MAS400’s engineers and test operators were permitted to do. Phaneuf highlights the contributions of Don Scott, CTO of Marine AI (who has collaborated with the former for over 30 years on a wide range of Mayflower Autonomous Ship | Dossier The Mayflower Autonomous Ship is poised to launch as one of the largest and longest- endurance ocean research vessels in the world (Images courtesy of Mayflower) Instead of a replica of the original Mayflower, I said we should build an autonomous ship that makes for an incredibly low-cost ocean research vessel Unmanned Systems Technology | February/March 2022 To train their computer vision AI, the Mayflower’s engineers used terabytes of original data from stationary sensors, followed by extensive real-world testing