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A full-size, fully-autonomous research ship is to make one of the world’s first autonomous transatlantic voyages. Promare, a non-profit marine research organisation, has worked with IBM, a global consortium of partners and scientific organisations to build the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS). Launching from Plymouth in the UK on 16 September 2020, the ship will travel to Plymouth, Massachusetts, after spending six months gathering data about the state of the ocean. With no crew on board, Andy Stanford-Clark, chief technology officer for IBM in the UK, explains how an AI ‘captain’ will plot the ship’s course.

Video by Jennifer Green, interview by Ania Lichtarowicz and Gareth Mitchell.

(Image: Mayflower Autonomous Ship, Credit: IBM/Promare.)