Red Hat will take part in the innovation project of the pilotless sea researches MAS

2020: Development of the project of the pilotless sea researches MAS

On April 16, 2020 it became known that the Red Hat company will take part in the innovation project of the pilotless sea researches MAS.

In 1620 the English port of Plymouth left the vessel "Meyflauer" onboard which there were more than one hundred British who went to the New World in hope for new life. 400 years later the autonomous vessel Mayflower (MAS) will repeat a way of the legendary sailing vessel, only this time without captain and crew. MAS will become one of the first full-size and completely autonomous pilotless courts who happened to cross Atlantic.

The MAS project is result of the global cooperation headed by the sea research organization Promare. The project dated for the 400 anniversary of legendary run of original Meyflauer offers interesting prospects for the industry of navigation and the future of oceanographic researches.

It is predicted that the market of autonomous navigation will grow from the current 90 billion dollars to more than 130 billion dollars by 2030. However for April, 2020 many autonomous vessels represent only the automated versions of the normal ships and are not capable to adapt to quickly changing conditions of ocean swimming quickly. Promare is going to equip MAS with the integrated complex of artificial intelligence technologies, cloud and edge-technologies of IBM to make possible independent management even in the most difficult situations.

The system of artificial intelligence AI Captain will be responsible for command of the vessel MAS – a complex of the interconnected cognitive systems allowing the computer it is correct to perceive information, to make decisions and to work optimum.

The artificial intelligence of AI Captain uses the cameras mounted onboard the vessel for visual collection of information and determination of potentially dangerous barriers, such as other vessels or garbage. As of April, 2020 a ship system machine vision is in development and perfects the functioning on the land within programs deep training, working based on the computer system IBM Power under management operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), industry Linux- platforms of a corporate class.

Other onboard MAS systems – Autonomy Manager and Safety Manager – are also controlled RHEL. The first, Autonomy Manager, makes recommendations and makes decisions proceeding from long-term goals. Safety Manager traces the made decisions and confirms their security in the context of the current situations, for example considering the obstacles which are in close proximity to avoid collisions. Safety Manager can also take necessary measures for security, including take steering and draft of engines under control, to activate the abnormal equipment or to execute restart of systems.

An onboard computing edge-system based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is designed taking into account requirements of operation of crucial workloads. During swimmings of MAS will not always be able to save access to high-speed communication therefore edge-devices will collect, to store and analyze data in the local mode. After connection recovery these data will be sent to coastal edge-nodes and are synchronized with data center of IBM Cloud. The team of research engineers will also be able deleted to update the training AI Captain models.

The RHEL platform is well prepared for work with such system as can perform the developed support of hybrid and multicloud environments, and allows developers to move easily applications between the on-premises servers, the central cloud and edge-systems (in this case, the vessel MAS). RHEL will provide the high level of reliability that is crucial for the project which cannot allow emergence of system failures when finding the vessel in the middle of the ocean.

Onboard MAS three modules with sensors and the equipment which will allow to conduct researches will be available and to expand scientific knowledge in such areas as sea cyber security, monitoring of marine mammals, mapping of levels of the ocean and plastic pollution.

One day of navigation of the research vessel costs tens of thousands of dollars, and duration of run is defined by a possibility of crew to be in the high sea that makes impossible commission of many sea expeditions. It is expected that the autonomous vessel Mayflower will become the profitable and flexible platform for collecting of scientific data which will help to save ecology of the ocean and the related industries of human activity.