Akihabara News (Tokyo) — An Artificial Intelligence-piloted ship successfully performed an extended test voyage along the coast of Japan, a first-of-its kind event at the end of last month.
The AI-piloted container ship, Suzaku, sailed from Tokyo Bay to Ise Bay from February 26 to March 1, without human intervention.
The 790 kilometer voyage was the fifth in a series of tests by the Nippon Foundation’s autonomous ship program.
Program director Satoru Kuwahara told national broadcaster NHK that the ship “was developed to solve the problem of labor shortages on domestic ships as society ages.”
There are still some labor demands even in the case of fully autonomous voyages, but far less manpower is needed compared to conventional shipping.
The tests are backed by the Designing the Future of Full Autonomous Ship Consortium, which includes over thirty companies from an array of fields.
The ship was equipped with numerous cameras to scan the coastline and to avoid maritime collisions. The AI piloted its course by measuring the height of waves and taking into account local weather reports. In this way it plotted the safest path to its destination.
In the event of technical failures or emergencies, the AI can switch to a remote manual piloting system.
Since roughly five hundred commercial ships navigate through Tokyo Bay on a daily basis, avoiding collisions was a particular concern of the developers, but the automated ship was able to perform its tasks flawlessly.
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