[gamayun]

The first drone to circumnav the world

This is so cool. Though the idea that sailors and winches and sheets would become irrelevant is greatly exaggerated.

The Drone That Will Sail Itself Around the World | Autopia | Wired.com

 

[flyingwelshman]

Re: The first drone to "circumnav the world."

:worthless:

 

[gamayun]

Re: The first drone to "circumnav the world."

Funny.

In more ways than one.

 

[Minnewaska]

Re: The first drone to "circumnav the world."

That is very cool. Article was too long for me to read completely this morning, but skimmed most of it.

I wonder how this one dealt with give way rules and/or collision avoidance? Similar concern for allowing widespread drones into airspace, that has to be dealt with. I think it can, but hasn't yet.

 

[MarkofSeaLife]

Re: The first drone to "circumnav the world."

I wonder how this one dealt with give way rules and/or collision avoidance?

How will it use paper charts?????????

Just disgusting. I bet it can't even tie a bowline.

 

[guitarguy56]

Re: The first drone to "circumnav the world."

Cool technology to do this... here is a pic and I assume that's the San Francisco Bay...

 

[mad_machine]

Re: The first drone to "circumnav the world."

it's incapable of giving way, so therefore it has right of way.. at least until a freighter runs it down. No doubt it also has AIS to alert passing ships to it's presence

 

[davidpm]

Re: The first drone to "circumnav the world."

I wonder if it has navigation lights at night at least.
It if it mostly carbon fiber I also wonder what the radar footprint will be.

 

[Minnewaska]

Re: The first drone to "circumnav the world."

In all seriousness, I don't want to have to worry about running in to one of these a night, if they have no avoidance measures.

 

[gamayun]

Re: The first drone to "circumnav the world."

There's going to be lots of AUVs sailing the world soon. They're small enough (right now) that a ship shouldn't have too much concern about running into one, but it does bring up a good question. They have satellite tracking for the researchers to find them, but my guess is that AIS and nav lights would eat up the batteries, which are already large to accommodate the monitoring devices.

As to the censors (ahem...moderators) on my post's heading, could you please also remove the quotation marks? I can't seem to do this myself and it's silly to appear to quote something that wasn't actually quoted in the article. Thanks!

 

[Classic30]

Re: The first drone to "circumnav the world."

In all seriousness, I don't want to have to worry about running in to one of these a night, if they have no avoidance measures.

A little over a decade now there were a couple of different companies working on "robot" container ships.. The thinking was that with the advent of AIS and GPS, crews weren't really required on container ships once they left the dock and taking away the accommodation spaces would allow quite a few more containers to be carried.

Unfortunately, I don't think the idea got off the drawing board for many reasons, including the one you mention, plus the bigger ones about (a) responsibility for an accident and (b) ship-handling in adverse conditions (storms, pirate attack, etc.)... but it seemed like a good idea to me.