In the first episode of the re-booted Yacht Business Podcast, David Fuller speaks with Harry Spedding, General Manager of AutoNaut about the technologies and edge cases that go into building autonomous, wave powered scientific research vessels.

Bookmarks & Shownotes

• 0:17 – The Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Also known as the Pacific trash vortex, and eve there, waves exist.
• 04:17 – Foiling technology has been around for a long time, though more recently used spectacularly by waveman Laird Hamilton to surf giant waves and unseen waves.
• 07:46 – Some missions can collect up to a Terabyte of data, so getting the data off the vessel via satellite could become very expensive!
• 12:32 – Satellite connectivity is changing thanks to projects like Starlink, but might not work at sea for smaller vessels because of the way the antennas are designed.
• 14:43 – The edge cases around solar power. Ice helps, salt crystals don’t. Which shows the importance of R&D and testing.
• 15:46 – Blockchain is not really being used at the moment. There may be some user cases for storage of data in an immutable format, but there are issues. Just because data is written into a blockchain doesn’t mean its ‘right’.
• 18:11 – How is Artificial Intelligence and AI being used? As an autonomous vehicle the command and control system uses an auto-pilot, but doesn’t remember and learn.
• 19:57 – Machine learning can be used to recognise whales from cameras and acoustics and other marine creatures. This can be used to notify wind farm construction sites of the presence of whales.
• 24:50 – Professional watersports and sailing including events such as the Vendee Globe and America’s Cup help to develop materials and technologies that can be used by others. Computers, power management, solar power. Their requirements push their suppliers to create better solutions.
• 27:30 – Collaboration leads to better results. Market power comes from interesting places.
• 28:30 – The Ocean Race forced suppliers to change to be more sustainable. Which had positive impact on the bottom line.

The post Harry Spedding and the AutoNaut appeared first on Yacht Business.