Today, we’ll talk about something that is barely covered in the Autonomous Tech world…
It’s also something I’m not familiar with, so I’ll just be able to talk about it. Technology has enabled us to build self-driving cars, but actually, the most impactful changes will be around flying cars, and sea navigation.
This article is based on an email I wrote to my mailing list — The original email is called “Startup Idea — Autonomous Boats”; it’s a concept where I explore the necessary steps we’ll need to build a startup around a specific topic.
Today, let’s take a look at Autonomous Boats.
How to start?
If we’re to build a startup, you must solve a problem that is Difficult, Urgent, and Recognized. After searching on Google, I found out that the biggest problem around boats is collisions.
Does that surprise you?
Over 90% of the world’s trade is carried by sea, the whole world is relying on the oceans, and the country which is the most concerned is the US. The U.S. economy is accounting for more than $352 billion in GDP and 3.1 million jobs, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The biggest risk of collisions is at the port, or in crowded places.
Here is what happened between 2011 and 2016, in Europe only.
I took this picture in a report from EMEA, just take a minute to read it here.
It’s full of fascinating facts.
Now, let’s see more precisely what we’re talking about.
Today’s article is about solving this particular problem.
This problem costs millions (in reparations, and lost cargo) and continues to happen, that is growing with the number of boats. It’s also a problem we all acknowledged watching TITANIC sink.
It’s time we solve it.
Autonomous Boats
Avoiding an accident when you’re driving a car is easy, you just turn the wheel a bit. Avoiding a cargo accident is much harder. Although I’ve never been in a cargo accident, my father has his boat license and I know how hard it is to maneuver in emergency situations.
Definition
So, how do we make boats autonomous? To be able to understand this, we must first define what“autonomous” means.
In self-driving vehicles, autonomy is measured by concrete facts.
In my self-driving car course, I describe the 5 levels of autonomy and how to target your market by selecting one of these levels.
_In a self-driving car, autonomy is easily measured using the driver’s involvement, and the range of use-cases covered. _In autonomous boats, we only measure autonomy using 3 criterias:
- No Autonomy — The current situation
- Half Autonomy — Autonomous with a crew on board.
- Full Autonomy — Autonomous, no crew on board.
I won’t talk about the remote-controlled boats, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
**Autonomy is either on or off; the only criteria we’re using is the presence or absence of the crew. **In most my emails and articles, I’m telling you about the 4 pillars that make vehicles autonomous. It really applies everywhere, even in boats.
Let’s review how these 4 pillars work in autonomous boats.
#deep-learning #autonomous-cars #machine-learning #self-driving-cars #deep learning
