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41 Mayflower Autonomous Ship | Dossier arrange all those things on the mast – the radar, AIS, marine GNSS, wi-fi, 4G and so on – we did considerable analysis of waveforms and beam patterns, and optimised their placement as far as possible; naturally there are some things you can’t deconflict but that’s fine,” Phaneuf says. Scott adds, “For instance, we wanted the GNSS high up but not directly in the path of the radar, and we also have special considerations for the AIS antenna. The AIS is being used to transmit ship observations to LEO satellites via the VHF band at about 108 bits per minute, which are then made accessible by the AIS provider in the cloud. It’s a one-way path that serves as a back-up method for getting the vessel’s status, surrounding traffic and other critical information. “We’re also using a similar transmission system in a project with NOAA to transmit meteorological data to their cloud system.” In addition to AIS traffic broadcasts, the mast also has a number of lights for visual warnings to other vessels of its position and approach; the lights are positioned largely at similar or higher levels than the various antennas and radar. While the ship is designed to work entirely by itself, extensive remote monitoring capabilities via the cloud allow the ship’s technicians and research clients to follow incoming data on vehicle health, position, payload findings and so on. This data can be viewed on any computer or tablet device via the MAS400 website or a direct data- interfacing portal. “We also found during our first crossing attempt that it was really important to be able to send software updates to the ship in real time over satcom,” Scott notes. “Given the importance of consistent data links to and from the ship, we previously used Apache Kafka for handling our data feeds, the same protocol used originally by Twitter and some other major businesses. More recently though we’ve switched to MQTT, which is more of an edge- or IoT-type protocol and very suitable for message brokering from remote locations with limited network bandwidth.” Future plans As mentioned, the Mayflower’s next Atlantic crossing attempt is planned for spring this year. Additional upcoming missions include some surveys up and down the US east coast on behalf of the US Coast Guard, NOAA, and numerous universities and research institutions. Afterwards, the USV will be brought back to Plymouth (UK), probably for another round of engineering improvements based on data gathered during the crossing attempt, to be followed by continued trials to see how its AI and hardware can be optimised further. “We’re also planning to build at least two more Mayflowers – one larger, one smaller and faster – both of which will use the exact same software system,” Phaneuf says. “We’re even starting to implement much of what we’ve accomplished in machine learning, data analysis and AI onto other people’s systems, as quite a few teams have been asking us for help in those areas. So we’re likely to officially launch a commercial branch of our software solutions through Marine AI in the near future.” Unmanned Systems Technology | February/March 2022 During our first crossing event we found it was really important to be able to send software updates to the ship in real time over satcom The mast features antennas for GNSS, 4G, wi-fi as well as AIS and radar, which have been mounted so as to prevent crosstalk or other interference