Intel takes the autonomous euphoria to the seas

Self-driving cars might not be with us for decades, but that hasn’t stopped Intel from partnering Rolls-Royce to take the autonomous trends to the high-seas.

The new partnership between the pair will combine the engineering know-how of Rolls-Royce and Intel’s AI smarts to create autonomous ships. With 90% of world trade is carried out by international shipping we’re surprised this idea hasn’t be raised earlier.

“We’re delighted to sign this agreement with Intel, and look forward to working together on developing exciting new technologies and products, which will play a big part in enabling the safe operation of autonomous ships,” said Kevin Daffey, Director, Engineering & Technology and Ship Intelligence at Rolls Royce. “This collaboration can help us to support ship owners in the automation of their navigation and operations, reducing the opportunity for human error and allowing crews to focus on more valuable tasks.”

“Delivering these systems is all about processing, moving and storing huge volumes of data, and that is where Intel comes in,” said Lisa Spelman, GM of Xeon Products at Intel. “Rolls-Royce is a key driver of innovation in the shipping industry and together we are creating the foundation for safe shipping operations around the world.”

While it might still be decades before autonomous vehicles hit the roads in any notable fashion, the seas and oceans seem a perfect environment for the autonomous technology. Not only do the ships rarely have to content with human beings crossing their paths, the dangers of shipping and the premeditated natures of shipping routes seem to make it a simpler task. We’re sure we are completely underestimating the complexities of the operations, but the biggest challenge for self-driving cars will be dealing with human operated vehicles and pedestrians; humans are unpredictable.

In terms of how the technology will work, the ships will have dedicated Xeon Gold servers onboard, turning them into floating data centres with heavy computation and AI inference capabilities. Unlike cars, these are vehicles which do not have to worry as much about being weight and space efficient so the compute problem becomes simpler. Rolls Royce’s Intelligent Awareness System uses AI-powered sensor fusion and decision making to provide situational awareness to the vessels, improving safety and allowing the ships to detect objects several kilometres away, while the data collected by the vessels will be stored using Intel’ 3D NAND SSDs, acting as a ‘black box’ in case of an accident.