9 ms·

Autonomous boats seem more solvable than autonomous cars

97 points by DrNuke 5y ago

uyt 5y ago
I didn't even realize it was unsolved. I thought it was like flying, where the pilot is only there during take off and landing, and the rest is handled by computers.
mr2loco 5y ago
I watched a cool docu on youtube about roboats the other day. I'll check it out next time I'm in Ansterdam They're making great progress
mstade 5y ago
With the way Sunday sailors are piloting their boats? Man, I dunno...
kuu 5y ago
Same news but from other source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29023983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29023983
baybal2 5y ago
Autonomous "boats" (ships) been a thing for quite a while in commercial shipping. The autopilot for smaller crafts is not yet that common.
- mr2loco 5y ago
  I just came across this : https://autonomous-mag.com/autonomous-cargo-ship-experiments-launching-in-japan-and-norway/ https://autonomous-mag.com/autonomous-cargo-ship-experiments... Lots of interesting projects
krisoft 5y ago
> Where autonomous vehicles have had the most success is in environments with a lot of predictability and structure, which is why I really like the idea of autonomous urban boats designed for cities with canals. I love a good autonomy challenge and love being near water, so this is close to my hearth. That being said this sentence seems to imply that city waterways are predictable? I'm not familiar with Amsterdam, my primary experience is with Oxford. Here you can easily see two crews trying to manage to leave the pier at the same time, while a third is rowing full speed towards them. Meanwhile kayakers and stand up paddle boarders are everywhere, and you can see the occasional swimmer bobbing in the water too. Often as an onlooker or occasional participant I can't figure out who wants to go where, let alone what path they are actually going to take. Its a ton of fun, and a great autonomy challenge I presume, but I wouldn't call it easy or predictable.
- dtech 5y ago
  Amsterdam is definitely less chaotic than Oxford, the canals are wider and there is less "pedestrian" traffic, the closest you'll find is water bikes or tubs with drinking people. The main canals are mostly visited by touring boats or motorized leisure craft.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  Waterways don't have clear lanes, intersections and turn signals, but you generally have unobstructed view, and every participant with the exception of the rare swimmer is much less nimble than a pedestrian or biker (and thus more predictable). Waterways are very chaotic, but in some ways it's still more predictable than city driving.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    >>the exception of the rare swimmer is much less nimble than a pedestrian or biker (and thus more predictable). The problem is that boats are an absolute pain to turn and are the very opposite of "nimble" too. Yes if you see a swimmer in the water 20m ahead of you they probably won't move very far, but also to avoid them you should have started making a turn about a minute ago. Having done some canal boating in the UK it's just inevitable that you will keep colliding with things, and unfortunately you leave a lot of kayakers pissed off because it's almost always them having to take an evasive action.
    - silasdavis 5y ago
      Perhaps not ideal but as a swimmer you almost always have down as an evasive direction. You do need awareness but this has saved me from multiple shallow hulled fast boats and water jetskis. You can hear them miles away though directionality of the sound is poor or absent.
      - notahacker 5y ago
        In a 3' deep canal, down is a problematic evasive direction!
javajosh 5y ago
Makes sense for larger boats in calm conditions as the input lag is enormous but very predictable, and the terrain is flat and simple, especially on open water. In fact, it makes so much sense that mechanical autopilots have been a thing for centuries!
lordnacho 5y ago
What about autonomous carts? Why aren't we seeing more attention on that, above autonomous cars, which drive fast, have passengers, and can hurt someone? I'm picturing a slow moving crawler that has a public bin on top, slowly trundling along the sidewalk in a loop from the garbage depot through town. Or a cart with space for dishes so that you can dump your used plates and get freshly cleaned ones from a central washery. Or just one that delivers packages.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  they would be vandalized.
- beardyw 5y ago
  I want the bin to have a voice, so if it encounters a pedestrian in a narrow spot it says "after you".
  - krisoft 5y ago
    The starship delivery drones can be described as a bin. And if you obstruct their path they ask you politely with their voice to please let them go.
somegame8861 5y ago
I am not a computer scientist, but it was obvious from years ago that autonomous vehicle is a pipe dream. So how did these billionaires degraded peasants with this false belief? Idiots really believed that scam artist Mask. I thought it would not happen in a 100 years, from looking into how computers work. Any C coder would like to comment on probability of vehicle AI, and present actual facts to prove or disprove?
streamofdigits 5y ago
(Semi-)Autonomous open sea cargo ships might be an even better use case. One could imagine totally unmanned ships cruising the planet and delivering goods without putting anybody at risk (or subjecting to the long days of confinment). But one might need people on-board for quite some time: eg mechanics when invariably something breaks down A canal environment is still quite crowded and maybe the economic motivation rather limited but its probably an excellent test bed
- yardie 5y ago
  Cargo ships are largely autonomous once underway. They have a small crew of 8-12 members who largely do maintenance, watch, and cook. Then, near shore it's all hands as they prepare the ship for docking.
  - streamofdigits 5y ago
    > 8-12 members who largely do maintenance, watch, and cook I suppose the "cooking" part can be eliminated once you don't need maintainance and watch :-) "Watch" is an interesting (and solvable?) challenge. Understanding the sea environment (visually, sonar etc) from the local (ship's) perspective can complement e.g satellite imagery. But there is also e.g. watching against piracy Maintainance seems the toughest. Unless the engineering is perfected to the point that it is only required at ports.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Most routine maintenance could be done in ports. The problem with that approach is that ships would then be stuck in port longer to finish maintenance work after unloading and loading cargo, which means ports would need more berths and shipping companies would need more expensive ships just to carry the same total load. It's actually cheaper to hire crew to do that preventative maintenance and minor repair work while underway.
    - rightbyte 5y ago
      Radar, sonar and satellite are good weather equipement though. Sea weed gets stuck on the sonar all the time. You will still need mechanics to solve things aboard no matter the navigational automation, which allready are on autopilot on open sea.
yardie 5y ago
The are looking at things above the water. Boats are in the water. And that is where most autopilots can't help. APs know nothing about tides, currents, waterline obstructions. As a powered boat the Roboat has one of the lowest priorities in Colregs; behind human power, sail, under tow, and limited maneuverability. There are no lanes to follow in waterways you can pass on the left or right. A big component of waterways traffic is using your mouth, getting on the VHF, and hailing the other captain.
- dagurp 5y ago
  The last part should be solvable with something like car2x
  - nradov 5y ago
    Larger vessels already transmit their position via AIS, which is helpful for collision avoidance. The problem is that you can't rely on it. Transmitters can fail or get switched off. The smallest vessels don't have AIS and probably never will. How would that work on a Hobie Cat that has no electronics at all?
    - yardie 5y ago
      AIS has a 50ms window to transmit data on just 2 channels(69,70). Not much of a problem when there are only a few ships in a few miles radius. But in a congested harbor transmitters may never get that window in a timely manner. I've experienced cargo ships popping up out of nowhere in AIS (I could see them on radar) in Valleta harbor. A proper AP will have to ingest information from all sources (vision, sound, radar, AIS) to be able to work outside of the low traffic areas.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Smallest vehicles likely never be automated. On other hand I hope everyone piloting them are smart enough to avoid the big ships. Most sufficiently big things are decent radar targets anyway. Or special military vehicles, which I expect to do the avoiding. As if you are the one that can't be seen, you better be careful one.
softwaredoug 5y ago
I worked on ship nav systems in the early 2000s Boats have had a higher level of autonomy than cars for a while. In the early 2000s you could plot a course on a computer and that software would navigate that course, avoiding some (charted) obstacles and the like. See: https://www.sperrymarine.com/integrated-bridge-system https://www.sperrymarine.com/integrated-bridge-system (sorry for crappy product page) One thing ships have is tons of redundancy. You can always go one level lower in control. Go from the charting system picking heading and coarse down to you setting heading directly via an autopilot. You can go from that to rudder control. Down all the way to manual control of the rudder. That kind of redundancy, plus a trained and alert crew, make a world of difference and seems quite different than the car world.
- rexreed 5y ago
  People have been using self-piloting sailboats / automated navigation on personal water craft for decades. The issue of course is collision avoidance, traffic navigation, and determining the best route autonomously.
  - tdrdt 5y ago
    Collision avoidance, traffic navigation, and determining the best route autonomously is already available for ships. A lot of the same sensors are used in cars as well.
    - wrycoder 5y ago
      Hitting a partially submerged container at night in a sailboat offshore is exciting.
- joey_bob 5y ago
  > Boats have had a higher level of autonomy than cars for a while. This is really a mixed bag - some categories of vessels have had more advanced navigation systems for decades, but on the the other hand a family minivan is about two decades ahead of a bowrider that goes for about same price when it comes to autonomy. More directly addressing the article - marine autonomy is an easier problem technically, but there is a significant market problem. Aside from water taxis, there is not the same compelling economic case for autonomous small boats as there is for commuter cars. Disclaimer: I work on ADAS systems for recreational boats.
im3w1l 5y ago
So here's my comparison between cars, boats, and aircraft: Car Boat Air Worst case you can safely stop Sometimes Yes No Reaction time required 100ms Minute Minute Trajectory tolerance 0.5m (city) 5m (harbor) 5m (takeoff / landing) Trajectory tolerance 2m (highway) 100m(open sea) 1km(mid flight) Collision survivable Yes Yes No Please add or point out my mistakes (I kinda pulled the numbers out of my ass).
- elif 5y ago
  I don't think you've ridden many boats in Amsterdam canals if you believe they can always safely stop and have a minute reaction window.
- fullstop 5y ago
  I'd disagree with the boat being able to safely stop, especially the massive ones.
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    I'm not saying they can come to an instant stop. But if they do stop they are in not in danger to themselves or the surrounding traffic. That means that if you see a sticky situation about to happen then you can start slowing down to make everything easier and you can keep slowing down until you are either able to safely handle it or completely still. If the computer has no idea whats going on then slowing down and requesting human assistance is very viable.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Stopping in heavy weather or currents is not at all safe. The ocean is a dynamic environment. Vessels must maintain steerageway or else they risk broaching or drifting into obstacles. In shallow waters a vessel in distress can sometimes drop anchor to hold position but that isn't always a practical option.
oblib 5y ago
I can see where this would work well in the scenario described: "in environments with a lot of predictability and structure". Waterways don't generally have vehicles doing high speeds and do have wider lanes to travel within than roadways. I live near two big lakes with a lot of boats on one of them (Table Rock Lake in Missouri) zooming all over the place. You could easily plot a course to get most anywhere on that lake without worrying about hitting anything or even coming close to any fixed structures or shallow spots, but you'd have to "see" or communicate with other boats to avoid those traveling or drifting or anchored most anywhere out there. This article pretty clearly states this tech is not there yet and my experience is that there would be dumbasses that would run into it on our lakes if it were out there. Probably not very often, but for sure it would because it does now.
belorn 5y ago
Autonomous Boats sounds great, through I do see a few things that will be needed that thankfully might have a better chance of being implemented on boats compared to cars. Coast guard and Maritime search and rescue will need to have the ability to shut down any boat in an radius in case swimmers or scuba divers get into the lane. I can also see this being used in places like Norway and Sweden where car ferries are used as an alternative to bridges. Those are slow (<10 knots) barge-like boats, and in my experience quite overbuilt in terms of withstanding any kind of weather. They are quite bit more dangerous in term of mass and distance, but they can be quite cost-effective compared to bridges and environmental friendly if electrified. In terms of making those safe enough I suspect you would need more than just lidar, but since they are bigger and have a potentially higher budget I can imagine they could afford a bit more radar/sonar/radio technology to identify ships and other things that might be in the water.
- nradov 5y ago
  Depending on the area there aren't necessarily defined lanes. Any vessel could by conducting dive operations so autonomous vessels would need to maintain situational awareness by monitoring VHF radio and watching for signal flags. Civilian sonar systems aren't usable for collision avoidance.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  What advantage would there be in making ferries in Norway autonomous? I think that even the ferry where I live (shortest scheduled crossing in Europe I think, less than ten minutes) would still need someone onboard to deal with the customers and handle emergencies. So you might reduce the crew from three to one during normal operation but when something goes wrong those other two will be needed again.
  - belorn 5y ago
    I am unsure how much you actually need someone to deal with customers. Roads/bridges are already automated in terms of reading the registration sign and the payment is also automated. The biggest issue from my experience is customers not knowing which lane to go to or where to park, but that seems like a problem which could be fixed through clearer markings and signs. The ferry is basically just a floating road, with the driver inside the car at all times. There are many smaller island with permanent resident, and only so much money to build bridges. Some places I know only have a ferry that goes there a few times a day. Making those kind of ferries cheaper would both improve those peoples lives but also enable more people to live in such locations. Without crunching the numbers, it seems possible that an autonomous ferry could be made cheaper than what an equal distance of road on land.
jpm_sd 5y ago
I work for a company that is making good progress in this field. We recently got a new round of funding: https://www.saildrone.com/news/saildrone-advance-ocean-intelligence-series-c-funding https://www.saildrone.com/news/saildrone-advance-ocean-intel... and we're hiring for numerous roles: https://www.saildrone.com/careers https://www.saildrone.com/careers - Compliance Specialist - DevOps Engineer - Front End Engineer - Full Stack Software Engineer - Machine Learning Engineer - Site Reliability Engineer - Software Engineer - Bathymetry - Software Engineer - Perception - Sr. Software Engineer - Acoustics - Sr. Software Engineer - Data Pipeline - Sr. Software Engineer - Ocean Science - Composite Boat Builder - Final Assembly Technician - Production Technician - Supply Chain Manager - Product Manager - Technical Program Manager - Sensors Manager - Vehicle Operations Technician - Senior Manufacturing Engineer - Electronics Technician - Electrical Engineer - Systems Operations Engineer - Vehicle Systems Administrator - Bathymetry Operations Manager - Lead Surveyor - Ocean
- bigjimmyjohnson 5y ago
  Looks like a cool project. Are any of those positions remote-friendly?
- ls65536 5y ago
  Some of the news I've seen associated with Saildrone recently has really fascinated me, like sailing one of the drones into a hurricane [0] and returning back data (including video) from the event! Just wanted to say great work to you all on that, and I look forward to seeing what else you have coming up! [0] https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/world-first-ocean-drone-captures-video-from-inside-hurricane https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/world-first-ocean-drone-ca...
- ArtWomb 5y ago
  Wow, that's really cool! Is there a reading list to get into subjects like: bathymetry, acoustics, perception, navigation and propulsion? An open source software suite for ocean science, perhaps? I'd dig a DIY kit for underwater photos. Analagous to a toy drone cam. Or a 1:50 model of your Sail Drone ;) https://www.chasing.com/chasing-dory.html https://www.chasing.com/chasing-dory.html
dcwca 5y ago
Something I don’t read enough about that would make autonomous cars a lot more reliable is smart tech in the road infra. Why don’t stop lights send a beacon? Roads and lanes should send a signal. Cars should send signals to each other about their intent eg. turning indicators should not be purely visual, etc. Are there standards for this stuff being worked on?
- elif 5y ago
  Every stop light is actually required to have a beacon to be fit for purpose. It's universal among all manufacturers in every country. When it's time to stop, they emit 700nm waves, but crucially, only in the direction that they apply. In fact, brake lights are required to emit almost identical waves, but in a different pattern. Having spent the last 30 hours autonomously driving from Texas to the east coast, I can confidently say it never failed to detect these lights, and the existing standard is both sufficient and not prone to invisible errors, which you seem to want to introduce.
yitchelle 5y ago
On the surface, it is hardly a fair comparison. Can an autonomous boat drive around through the Suez canal and avoid all the obstacles? Now that would be a fair comparison.
chadash 5y ago
And it's also a lot less important. If you are using a boat for pleasure, part of the fun is in driving it. Meanwhile, for commercial vessels, the ROI is not going to be very meaningful. A ship with capacity to carry 20,000 20-ft containers only needs a handful of people operating, only a few of whom are actually piloting it. A cruise ship might have tons of crew, but again, only a few people doing piloting and navigation. There's probably a small market for small commercial vessels and maybe some recreational boats, but overall, there just isn't the demand for this in the way that there is for cars or trucks.
fbanon 5y ago
Yeah. And autonomous flight is already solved. Just like autonomous trains. What's so surprising?
msis 5y ago
Disclaimer: I'm the founder of blkSAIL (black sail) that builds AI and autonomy for ocean-going maritime ships. We are an MIT CSAIL spinoff. We started with an aim to become Uber for the waterways, then pivoted to large ships. Many of the comments below touch on many key points: (1) most commercial ships have a crew between 8 to 20, (2) auto-pilot in ships exist since the GPS was invented, (3) when ship hits the fan, there's not much you can do. (1) Autonomy in maritime is not to replace seafarers, the navigation crew is less than 30% of the crew. And crew is negligible OPEX compared to fuel etc. (2) Because the industry is the backbone of global trade, it moves much slower in adopting technology for the sake of technology. However, when there's a simple reliable system that can clear benefit, the adoption happens. So given that there's few[1] lanes in the ocean, you can easily go from one waypoint to the next. (3) Onboard a ship, there's no such thing as breaks. In most cases, you know about a collision or a grounding 12+ minutes in advance. The challenge is in getting the predictions right and abide by the rules of the road. Most advanced LIDAR have 1km range, which is too close, cameras don't see much neither[2]. [1]: there are quite few channels around ports to ease traffic that are one-way. [2]: the resolution is too low to see far out. When using zoom, the stabilization is a nightmare.
- nradov 5y ago
  The L3Harris Mk20 optical sensor supposedly has excellent stabilization when using zoom. But it's intended for warships and might not be suitable for civilian autonomous vessels. https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/electro-optical-sight-systems-naval-surface-imaging https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/electro-optical-si...
echopurity 5y ago
>MIT's Roboats will find useful applications That's not news. It's fortune telling.

97 points by DrNuke 5y ago

uyt 5y ago

I didn't even realize it was unsolved. I thought it was like flying, where the pilot is only there during take off and landing, and the rest is handled by computers.

mr2loco 5y ago

I watched a cool docu on youtube about roboats the other day. I'll check it out next time I'm in Ansterdam They're making great progress

mstade 5y ago

With the way Sunday sailors are piloting their boats? Man, I dunno...

kuu 5y ago

Same news but from other source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29023983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29023983

baybal2 5y ago

Autonomous "boats" (ships) been a thing for quite a while in commercial shipping. The autopilot for smaller crafts is not yet that common.

mr2loco 5y ago
I just came across this : https://autonomous-mag.com/autonomous-cargo-ship-experiments-launching-in-japan-and-norway/ https://autonomous-mag.com/autonomous-cargo-ship-experiments... Lots of interesting projects

krisoft 5y ago

> Where autonomous vehicles have had the most success is in environments with a lot of predictability and structure, which is why I really like the idea of autonomous urban boats designed for cities with canals. I love a good autonomy challenge and love being near water, so this is close to my hearth. That being said this sentence seems to imply that city waterways are predictable? I'm not familiar with Amsterdam, my primary experience is with Oxford. Here you can easily see two crews trying to manage to leave the pier at the same time, while a third is rowing full speed towards them. Meanwhile kayakers and stand up paddle boarders are everywhere, and you can see the occasional swimmer bobbing in the water too. Often as an onlooker or occasional participant I can't figure out who wants to go where, let alone what path they are actually going to take. Its a ton of fun, and a great autonomy challenge I presume, but I wouldn't call it easy or predictable.

dtech 5y ago
Amsterdam is definitely less chaotic than Oxford, the canals are wider and there is less "pedestrian" traffic, the closest you'll find is water bikes or tubs with drinking people. The main canals are mostly visited by touring boats or motorized leisure craft.
wongarsu 5y ago
Waterways don't have clear lanes, intersections and turn signals, but you generally have unobstructed view, and every participant with the exception of the rare swimmer is much less nimble than a pedestrian or biker (and thus more predictable). Waterways are very chaotic, but in some ways it's still more predictable than city driving.
- gambiting 5y ago
  >>the exception of the rare swimmer is much less nimble than a pedestrian or biker (and thus more predictable). The problem is that boats are an absolute pain to turn and are the very opposite of "nimble" too. Yes if you see a swimmer in the water 20m ahead of you they probably won't move very far, but also to avoid them you should have started making a turn about a minute ago. Having done some canal boating in the UK it's just inevitable that you will keep colliding with things, and unfortunately you leave a lot of kayakers pissed off because it's almost always them having to take an evasive action.
  - silasdavis 5y ago
    Perhaps not ideal but as a swimmer you almost always have down as an evasive direction. You do need awareness but this has saved me from multiple shallow hulled fast boats and water jetskis. You can hear them miles away though directionality of the sound is poor or absent.
    - notahacker 5y ago
      In a 3' deep canal, down is a problematic evasive direction!

javajosh 5y ago

Makes sense for larger boats in calm conditions as the input lag is enormous but very predictable, and the terrain is flat and simple, especially on open water. In fact, it makes so much sense that mechanical autopilots have been a thing for centuries!

lordnacho 5y ago

What about autonomous carts? Why aren't we seeing more attention on that, above autonomous cars, which drive fast, have passengers, and can hurt someone? I'm picturing a slow moving crawler that has a public bin on top, slowly trundling along the sidewalk in a loop from the garbage depot through town. Or a cart with space for dishes so that you can dump your used plates and get freshly cleaned ones from a central washery. Or just one that delivers packages.

_dain_ 5y ago
they would be vandalized.
beardyw 5y ago
I want the bin to have a voice, so if it encounters a pedestrian in a narrow spot it says "after you".
- krisoft 5y ago
  The starship delivery drones can be described as a bin. And if you obstruct their path they ask you politely with their voice to please let them go.

somegame8861 5y ago

I am not a computer scientist, but it was obvious from years ago that autonomous vehicle is a pipe dream. So how did these billionaires degraded peasants with this false belief? Idiots really believed that scam artist Mask. I thought it would not happen in a 100 years, from looking into how computers work. Any C coder would like to comment on probability of vehicle AI, and present actual facts to prove or disprove?

streamofdigits 5y ago

(Semi-)Autonomous open sea cargo ships might be an even better use case. One could imagine totally unmanned ships cruising the planet and delivering goods without putting anybody at risk (or subjecting to the long days of confinment). But one might need people on-board for quite some time: eg mechanics when invariably something breaks down A canal environment is still quite crowded and maybe the economic motivation rather limited but its probably an excellent test bed

yardie 5y ago
Cargo ships are largely autonomous once underway. They have a small crew of 8-12 members who largely do maintenance, watch, and cook. Then, near shore it's all hands as they prepare the ship for docking.
- streamofdigits 5y ago
  > 8-12 members who largely do maintenance, watch, and cook I suppose the "cooking" part can be eliminated once you don't need maintainance and watch :-) "Watch" is an interesting (and solvable?) challenge. Understanding the sea environment (visually, sonar etc) from the local (ship's) perspective can complement e.g satellite imagery. But there is also e.g. watching against piracy Maintainance seems the toughest. Unless the engineering is perfected to the point that it is only required at ports.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Most routine maintenance could be done in ports. The problem with that approach is that ships would then be stuck in port longer to finish maintenance work after unloading and loading cargo, which means ports would need more berths and shipping companies would need more expensive ships just to carry the same total load. It's actually cheaper to hire crew to do that preventative maintenance and minor repair work while underway.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Radar, sonar and satellite are good weather equipement though. Sea weed gets stuck on the sonar all the time. You will still need mechanics to solve things aboard no matter the navigational automation, which allready are on autopilot on open sea.

yardie 5y ago

The are looking at things above the water. Boats are in the water. And that is where most autopilots can't help. APs know nothing about tides, currents, waterline obstructions. As a powered boat the Roboat has one of the lowest priorities in Colregs; behind human power, sail, under tow, and limited maneuverability. There are no lanes to follow in waterways you can pass on the left or right. A big component of waterways traffic is using your mouth, getting on the VHF, and hailing the other captain.

dagurp 5y ago
The last part should be solvable with something like car2x
- nradov 5y ago
  Larger vessels already transmit their position via AIS, which is helpful for collision avoidance. The problem is that you can't rely on it. Transmitters can fail or get switched off. The smallest vessels don't have AIS and probably never will. How would that work on a Hobie Cat that has no electronics at all?
  - yardie 5y ago
    AIS has a 50ms window to transmit data on just 2 channels(69,70). Not much of a problem when there are only a few ships in a few miles radius. But in a congested harbor transmitters may never get that window in a timely manner. I've experienced cargo ships popping up out of nowhere in AIS (I could see them on radar) in Valleta harbor. A proper AP will have to ingest information from all sources (vision, sound, radar, AIS) to be able to work outside of the low traffic areas.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Smallest vehicles likely never be automated. On other hand I hope everyone piloting them are smart enough to avoid the big ships. Most sufficiently big things are decent radar targets anyway. Or special military vehicles, which I expect to do the avoiding. As if you are the one that can't be seen, you better be careful one.

softwaredoug 5y ago

I worked on ship nav systems in the early 2000s Boats have had a higher level of autonomy than cars for a while. In the early 2000s you could plot a course on a computer and that software would navigate that course, avoiding some (charted) obstacles and the like. See: https://www.sperrymarine.com/integrated-bridge-system https://www.sperrymarine.com/integrated-bridge-system (sorry for crappy product page) One thing ships have is tons of redundancy. You can always go one level lower in control. Go from the charting system picking heading and coarse down to you setting heading directly via an autopilot. You can go from that to rudder control. Down all the way to manual control of the rudder. That kind of redundancy, plus a trained and alert crew, make a world of difference and seems quite different than the car world.

rexreed 5y ago
People have been using self-piloting sailboats / automated navigation on personal water craft for decades. The issue of course is collision avoidance, traffic navigation, and determining the best route autonomously.
- tdrdt 5y ago
  Collision avoidance, traffic navigation, and determining the best route autonomously is already available for ships. A lot of the same sensors are used in cars as well.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    Hitting a partially submerged container at night in a sailboat offshore is exciting.
joey_bob 5y ago
> Boats have had a higher level of autonomy than cars for a while. This is really a mixed bag - some categories of vessels have had more advanced navigation systems for decades, but on the the other hand a family minivan is about two decades ahead of a bowrider that goes for about same price when it comes to autonomy. More directly addressing the article - marine autonomy is an easier problem technically, but there is a significant market problem. Aside from water taxis, there is not the same compelling economic case for autonomous small boats as there is for commuter cars. Disclaimer: I work on ADAS systems for recreational boats.

im3w1l 5y ago

So here's my comparison between cars, boats, and aircraft: Car Boat Air Worst case you can safely stop Sometimes Yes No Reaction time required 100ms Minute Minute Trajectory tolerance 0.5m (city) 5m (harbor) 5m (takeoff / landing) Trajectory tolerance 2m (highway) 100m(open sea) 1km(mid flight) Collision survivable Yes Yes No Please add or point out my mistakes (I kinda pulled the numbers out of my ass).

elif 5y ago
I don't think you've ridden many boats in Amsterdam canals if you believe they can always safely stop and have a minute reaction window.
fullstop 5y ago
I'd disagree with the boat being able to safely stop, especially the massive ones.
- im3w1l 5y ago
  I'm not saying they can come to an instant stop. But if they do stop they are in not in danger to themselves or the surrounding traffic. That means that if you see a sticky situation about to happen then you can start slowing down to make everything easier and you can keep slowing down until you are either able to safely handle it or completely still. If the computer has no idea whats going on then slowing down and requesting human assistance is very viable.
  - nradov 5y ago
    Stopping in heavy weather or currents is not at all safe. The ocean is a dynamic environment. Vessels must maintain steerageway or else they risk broaching or drifting into obstacles. In shallow waters a vessel in distress can sometimes drop anchor to hold position but that isn't always a practical option.

oblib 5y ago

I can see where this would work well in the scenario described: "in environments with a lot of predictability and structure". Waterways don't generally have vehicles doing high speeds and do have wider lanes to travel within than roadways. I live near two big lakes with a lot of boats on one of them (Table Rock Lake in Missouri) zooming all over the place. You could easily plot a course to get most anywhere on that lake without worrying about hitting anything or even coming close to any fixed structures or shallow spots, but you'd have to "see" or communicate with other boats to avoid those traveling or drifting or anchored most anywhere out there. This article pretty clearly states this tech is not there yet and my experience is that there would be dumbasses that would run into it on our lakes if it were out there. Probably not very often, but for sure it would because it does now.

belorn 5y ago

Autonomous Boats sounds great, through I do see a few things that will be needed that thankfully might have a better chance of being implemented on boats compared to cars. Coast guard and Maritime search and rescue will need to have the ability to shut down any boat in an radius in case swimmers or scuba divers get into the lane. I can also see this being used in places like Norway and Sweden where car ferries are used as an alternative to bridges. Those are slow (<10 knots) barge-like boats, and in my experience quite overbuilt in terms of withstanding any kind of weather. They are quite bit more dangerous in term of mass and distance, but they can be quite cost-effective compared to bridges and environmental friendly if electrified. In terms of making those safe enough I suspect you would need more than just lidar, but since they are bigger and have a potentially higher budget I can imagine they could afford a bit more radar/sonar/radio technology to identify ships and other things that might be in the water.

nradov 5y ago
Depending on the area there aren't necessarily defined lanes. Any vessel could by conducting dive operations so autonomous vessels would need to maintain situational awareness by monitoring VHF radio and watching for signal flags. Civilian sonar systems aren't usable for collision avoidance.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
What advantage would there be in making ferries in Norway autonomous? I think that even the ferry where I live (shortest scheduled crossing in Europe I think, less than ten minutes) would still need someone onboard to deal with the customers and handle emergencies. So you might reduce the crew from three to one during normal operation but when something goes wrong those other two will be needed again.
- belorn 5y ago
  I am unsure how much you actually need someone to deal with customers. Roads/bridges are already automated in terms of reading the registration sign and the payment is also automated. The biggest issue from my experience is customers not knowing which lane to go to or where to park, but that seems like a problem which could be fixed through clearer markings and signs. The ferry is basically just a floating road, with the driver inside the car at all times. There are many smaller island with permanent resident, and only so much money to build bridges. Some places I know only have a ferry that goes there a few times a day. Making those kind of ferries cheaper would both improve those peoples lives but also enable more people to live in such locations. Without crunching the numbers, it seems possible that an autonomous ferry could be made cheaper than what an equal distance of road on land.

jpm_sd 5y ago

I work for a company that is making good progress in this field. We recently got a new round of funding: https://www.saildrone.com/news/saildrone-advance-ocean-intelligence-series-c-funding https://www.saildrone.com/news/saildrone-advance-ocean-intel... and we're hiring for numerous roles: https://www.saildrone.com/careers https://www.saildrone.com/careers - Compliance Specialist - DevOps Engineer - Front End Engineer - Full Stack Software Engineer - Machine Learning Engineer - Site Reliability Engineer - Software Engineer - Bathymetry - Software Engineer - Perception - Sr. Software Engineer - Acoustics - Sr. Software Engineer - Data Pipeline - Sr. Software Engineer - Ocean Science - Composite Boat Builder - Final Assembly Technician - Production Technician - Supply Chain Manager - Product Manager - Technical Program Manager - Sensors Manager - Vehicle Operations Technician - Senior Manufacturing Engineer - Electronics Technician - Electrical Engineer - Systems Operations Engineer - Vehicle Systems Administrator - Bathymetry Operations Manager - Lead Surveyor - Ocean

bigjimmyjohnson 5y ago
Looks like a cool project. Are any of those positions remote-friendly?
ls65536 5y ago
Some of the news I've seen associated with Saildrone recently has really fascinated me, like sailing one of the drones into a hurricane [0] and returning back data (including video) from the event! Just wanted to say great work to you all on that, and I look forward to seeing what else you have coming up! [0] https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/world-first-ocean-drone-captures-video-from-inside-hurricane https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/world-first-ocean-drone-ca...
ArtWomb 5y ago
Wow, that's really cool! Is there a reading list to get into subjects like: bathymetry, acoustics, perception, navigation and propulsion? An open source software suite for ocean science, perhaps? I'd dig a DIY kit for underwater photos. Analagous to a toy drone cam. Or a 1:50 model of your Sail Drone ;) https://www.chasing.com/chasing-dory.html https://www.chasing.com/chasing-dory.html

dcwca 5y ago

Something I don’t read enough about that would make autonomous cars a lot more reliable is smart tech in the road infra. Why don’t stop lights send a beacon? Roads and lanes should send a signal. Cars should send signals to each other about their intent eg. turning indicators should not be purely visual, etc. Are there standards for this stuff being worked on?

elif 5y ago
Every stop light is actually required to have a beacon to be fit for purpose. It's universal among all manufacturers in every country. When it's time to stop, they emit 700nm waves, but crucially, only in the direction that they apply. In fact, brake lights are required to emit almost identical waves, but in a different pattern. Having spent the last 30 hours autonomously driving from Texas to the east coast, I can confidently say it never failed to detect these lights, and the existing standard is both sufficient and not prone to invisible errors, which you seem to want to introduce.

yitchelle 5y ago

On the surface, it is hardly a fair comparison. Can an autonomous boat drive around through the Suez canal and avoid all the obstacles? Now that would be a fair comparison.

chadash 5y ago

And it's also a lot less important. If you are using a boat for pleasure, part of the fun is in driving it. Meanwhile, for commercial vessels, the ROI is not going to be very meaningful. A ship with capacity to carry 20,000 20-ft containers only needs a handful of people operating, only a few of whom are actually piloting it. A cruise ship might have tons of crew, but again, only a few people doing piloting and navigation. There's probably a small market for small commercial vessels and maybe some recreational boats, but overall, there just isn't the demand for this in the way that there is for cars or trucks.

fbanon 5y ago

Yeah. And autonomous flight is already solved. Just like autonomous trains. What's so surprising?

msis 5y ago

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of blkSAIL (black sail) that builds AI and autonomy for ocean-going maritime ships. We are an MIT CSAIL spinoff. We started with an aim to become Uber for the waterways, then pivoted to large ships. Many of the comments below touch on many key points: (1) most commercial ships have a crew between 8 to 20, (2) auto-pilot in ships exist since the GPS was invented, (3) when ship hits the fan, there's not much you can do. (1) Autonomy in maritime is not to replace seafarers, the navigation crew is less than 30% of the crew. And crew is negligible OPEX compared to fuel etc. (2) Because the industry is the backbone of global trade, it moves much slower in adopting technology for the sake of technology. However, when there's a simple reliable system that can clear benefit, the adoption happens. So given that there's few[1] lanes in the ocean, you can easily go from one waypoint to the next. (3) Onboard a ship, there's no such thing as breaks. In most cases, you know about a collision or a grounding 12+ minutes in advance. The challenge is in getting the predictions right and abide by the rules of the road. Most advanced LIDAR have 1km range, which is too close, cameras don't see much neither[2]. [1]: there are quite few channels around ports to ease traffic that are one-way. [2]: the resolution is too low to see far out. When using zoom, the stabilization is a nightmare.

nradov 5y ago
The L3Harris Mk20 optical sensor supposedly has excellent stabilization when using zoom. But it's intended for warships and might not be suitable for civilian autonomous vessels. https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/electro-optical-sight-systems-naval-surface-imaging https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/electro-optical-si...

echopurity 5y ago

>MIT's Roboats will find useful applications That's not news. It's fortune telling.