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With starlink we could see completely autonomous drone sailboats for shipping coming soon?
by mentos 3y ago
With starlink we could see completely autonomous drone sailboats for shipping coming soon?
- chongli 3y agoHow would you secure them? Pirates have already begun to be a huge problem in particular political/economic hot spots around the world. Autonomous drone sailboats would be ripe plums just waiting to be plucked. I think one of the biggest issues is that these drones could ostensibly be jammed from beyond visual range and then disabled and captured during jamming. This would make it very difficult to detect the perpetrators via any sort of remote surveillance.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoThere could be a convoy of drone ships, each with automated defensive system. The convoy would be patrolled by smaller/faster manned ships with security personnel looking out for pirates
- dylan604 3y agoOh, okay. So, instead of crewing the ship, you're crewing multiple ships to go along with the unmanned ship? The logic with some just eludes me
- datameta 3y agoOk but what if we dig deeper. What does an autonomous ship afford? The space and weight savings of having no human habitation (just mechanic/engineer access for equipment maintenance at dock) would be rather large. No need to maintain human-comfortable conditions, bring water and food for the voyage, no recreational areas, quarters, corridors, etc. In fact, the entire ship can be sealed and resealed at port so that if pirates board, they'd need plasma cutters. With no bridge, they'd need to hack the sheep instead of take over the crew.
- fbdab103 3y agoCargo ships are so stupidly big that crew accommodations are a rounding error in the volume. Much bigger concerns are equipment breaking down in the middle of the ocean without anyone able to affect repairs.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoYou could probably do a smaller crew than if you had to man all the cargo ships. I'm imagining like an ocean train
- stefan_ 3y agoI suppose there is no reason to make an autonomous cargo ship accessible to humans.
- MostlyStable 3y agoIf you they have access to it for hours-to-days, then there is no practical way to keep people out, assuming they care enough to try. Even if they have to cut through the hull, there's enough time to do it on trans-oceanic voyage.
- happyopossum 3y agoGiven time and sufficient motivation (starvation is a common one for pirates), anything is accessible to humans.
- fragmede 3y agowith sufficient motivation, we were even able to get to the moon! getting to the sun is still elusive though (current plans are to go at night)
- bragr 3y agoThere won't be fully autonomous ships for transoceanic shipping until all the maintenance can be done autonomously too. Perhaps you can eliminate most of the bridge crew, but the engineers aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
- beAbU 3y agoStarlink is not what's been holding back autonomous shipping, wind- or otherwise powered.
- scrumper 3y agoHmm, what’s starlink needed for if it’s completely autonomous? Satellite internet covering oceans has been around for a while - but the hard part of fully autonomous sailing is not a low latency backchannel for telemetry :) Some small, drone sailboats exist for ocean research in the 2-3m range. There are some designs and prototypes for larger vessels. A lot of the actual work of the crew on an ocean crossing is fixing stuff that breaks. No real way to AI that away, and the bigger you go the more likely things are to fail.
- dylan604 3y agoFor these drone ships, what are the operating parameters regarding weather, size of waves, etc?