Ship with no crew to sail across the Atlantic

[sl8]

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-54154157
(video at link)

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.

[Sherman A1]

1. Wow

[Throck]

2. Sounds ripe for pirates.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. With no cargo and no crew, all they could do is hold the boat and experiments to ransom

and there would be far less pressure to give in to that than if there were a crew involved.

[PJMcK]

4. Not a lot of pirates in the North Atlantic (n/t)