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IBM's AI-Powered Robotic 'Mayflower' Ship Finally Reaches Its Destination - Sort of (apnews.com) 28

Posted by EditorDavid from the thanksgiving-day dept.
The Associated Press reports on "a crewless robotic boat that had tried to retrace the 1620 sea voyage of the Mayflower" from the U.K. to Massachusetts' Plymouth Rock. And after five weeks it finally did reach North America.

Halifax, Canada.

"The technology that makes up the autonomous system worked perfectly, flawlessly," an IBM computing executive involved in the project told the Associated Press. But "Mechanically, we did run into problems."

It's especially disappointing because they'd tried the same voyage last year. (Slashdot had noted that "Unlike the real Mayflower, this robotic 21st-century doppelganger 'had to turn back Friday to fix a mechanical problem,' reports the Associated Press...")

So what happened this year? A new article from the Associated Press reports: It set off again from England nearly a year later on April 27, bound for Virginia — but a generator problem diverted it to Portugal's Azores islands, where a team member flew in to perform emergency repairs. More troubles on the open sea came in late May when the U.S.-bound boat developed a problem with the charging circuit for the generator's starter batteries.

AI software is getting better at helping self-driving machines understand their surroundings and pilot themselves, but most robots can't heal themselves when the hardware goes awry.

Nonprofit marine research organization ProMare, which worked with IBM to build the ship, switched to a back-up navigation computer on May 30 and charted a course to Halifax — which was closer than any U.S. destination.
And unlike the real Mayflower, "the boat's webcam on Sunday morning showed it being towed by a larger boat as the Halifax skyline neared — a safety requirement under international maritime rules, IBM said."
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IBM's AI-Powered Robotic 'Mayflower' Ship Finally Reaches Its Destination - Sort of More

IBM's AI-Powered Robotic 'Mayflower' Ship Finally Reaches Its Destination - Sort of

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  • It's beautiful that they tried. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Sunday June 05, 2022 @11:59PM (#62596242)
    Such voyages are important to understand humanity. What we are willing to risk and suffer for the possibility of better.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      This trip shows two things. IBM choose not to build highly reliable ships that can function without a crew. We know that such ships are possible. But maybe sticking to the historic nature made it impractical . Second, our risk tolerance changes. A lot of people heading to the US were teenagers from large families. Their parents were not concerned that they would never hear from these children again of the might die before or soon after reaching the new world. A situation like Mars one was status quo. We see

      • The Puritains were interested in setting up a totalitarian theocratic government of the sort Cromwell founded a few years later. This wasn't about options or freedom, this was about tyranny, bloodlust and power.

      • There is, no doubt, a trend for goods transport within a world where manufacturing and other production works for markets across the entire planet to become as automatic as possible cutting labor costs. Automatic transport units such as driverless trucks and crewless boats must, like any independent living creature, must become aware of their condition to communicate to control centers to specify developing problems before they cripple the moving units so that alternate components can be automatically beco
    • IBM's Mayflower didn't land on Halifax - Halifax landed on IBM!

  • What kind of asshole do you have to be to get kicked out of England??

    Maybe Canada will take them, this time round.

    • Re:Those robotic Pilgrims again... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @03:18AM (#62596436) Homepage

      What kind of asshole do you have to be to get kicked out of England??

      Well, technically, you'd be the average Australian.

    • The Puritains were brutal, violent, tyrannical, evil beyond measure. 20 years later, their then-leader Oliver Cromwell deposed the king, parliament, and any member of the judiciary who dared to disagree with the verdicts and sentences he ordered them to give in advance of trials.

      Their religious fanaticism and determination to end experiments in democracy in favour of religious theocracy, alongside their attempts to control the judiciary by threatening to execute any judge not giving the decision they'd decided beforehand, along with their pre-written sentences, made them evil beyond measure even by 1600s standards.

      The Thanksgiving story should, from what I can find from the Smithsonian et al, read that the Pilgrims took the food at gunpoint, beheaded the native men and burned those women and children alive they couldn't sell into sex slavery. We can understand such people today, because these kinds of actions do take place today in various parts of the world, under banners such as ISIS.

      That's the kind of people even Engand in the 1600s couldn't tolerate.

      • Re:Those robotic Pilgrims again... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @06:44AM (#62596626)
        In lighter news, they were also the ones who started the war on Christmas.

        Fox News would have a field day if they ever learned that the wars against "Christian culture" were perpetrated hardest by Christians themselves.

        That is the root of all US Christianity - they want freedom to oppress others.

        • That is the root of all US Christianity - they want freedom to oppress others.

          I'd say that's organized religion in general. Eventually the "organized" becomes more important than whatever the "religion" part of the equation is and "love thy brother" becomes "oppress thine motherfuckers" for anybody not already choking down the the koolaide.

      • " the Pilgrims took the food at gunpoint"

        To be fair, the turkeys were re-imported form England.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
        If those are the lessons you've learned from history, you're a fool (no, I don't think you're a fool). Expand your view a bit and your blood pressure will drop. They weren't a shining city on a hill, but throughout the history of foreign colonization, theirs was pretty tame. Context is the key to history. If you misunderstand the context, you'll suffer the same fate as those that don't learn from history.

        • Re:Those robotic Pilgrims again... (Score:4, Informative)

          by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @01:04PM (#62597480)

          Also, the Puritans were not a large part of the colonies. There were several colonies, only one was Puritan, and one was even Catholic. The Puritans got some good PR later on putting them to the forefront in the simplistic history for school kids. For example you don't often hear about the colonists who arrived as part of a penal sentence. There's this believe that puritanism is at the heart of American culture, but their particular sect lasted only a short time and only in a local place. Religiously at the time of the revolution the Puritans were gone and instead you there was more dominance of a scattering of European protestant churches that would comprise many of today's mainstream denominations.

  • As good as that era's navigation was seems like a win to me. The Mayflower was way off course. But then the redo was using GPS(so big fail) i'm sure. So tech fail.
  • Unfortunately there was no Electric Monk on board - "So the Monks were built with an eye for originality of design and also for practical horse-riding ability. This was important. People, and indeed things, looked more sincere on a horse. So two legs were held to be both more suitable and cheaper than the more normal primes of seventeen, nineteen or twenty-three; the skin the Monks were given was pinkish-looking instead of purple, smooth and soft instead of crenellated. They were also restricted to just the

  • The real Mayflower turned back twice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Malc ( 1751 ) on Monday June 06, 2022 @02:20AM (#62596402)

    "Unlike the real Mayflower, this robotic 21st-century doppelganger 'had to turn back Friday to fix a mechanical problem,' reports the Associated Press...")

    Somebody apparently doesnâ(TM)t know their history: the Mayflower wasnâ(TM)t forced to return once, but twice! Albeit due to three leaks in its sister ship the Speedwell.

    Furthermore, the crossing took 10 weeks (twice as long) at a time of year with much worse weather.

  • dot-dot-dot dash-dash-dash dot-dash dot-dot

    ...

    shame about the ascii art filter i couldn't actually type the dots and dashes.

    • "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine"... ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _merlin ( 160982 )

      SOAI? What am I missing?

      • SOAI? What am I missing?

        nothing but the joke but don't worry it's not that good.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by _merlin ( 160982 )

          Then I guess you're trying to do a play on the common backronym "save our souls" for the international distress code SOS but with "artificial intelligence" in place of souls? Fun fact, SOS was just chosen in 1906 because it's an easy pattern to remember and recognise for people who don't know Morse code - it was only backronymed as "save our souls" later. Strictly speaking, it isn't even SOS, as it lacks the pauses between letters (if you were spelling out SOS, you'd pause between the groups for each lett

  • Also, no card playing on Sundays and it will work ok.

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