Chichester Yacht Club Magazine April 2017 | Page 11

The Rise of the Machines!
Your correspondent and his co-captain were
recently tramping along to windward on their
shakedown cruise to Bembridge when a
strange yellow vessel was spotted low in the
water crossing their bow about quarter of a
mile ahead.
In the smallish waves kicked up by the W 3/4
it was difficult to make it out clearly but a look
at the AIS screen showed a target called
CW79 Unmanned and, having tracked it for a
few minutes, it seemed that it was being
shadowed by a fishing type vessel.
It was a matter of a moment’s Googling to
find out that this was an unmanned vessel
from the stable of ASV, a company that
designs, builds, operates, sells and leases
autonomous surface vessels from its facility in
Porchester.
The types of vessels they work with are
documented on their informative website and
include commercial, scientific and military
applications.
Of course unmanned vessels are nothing new
as the RC Laser section can confirm. But they
are becoming larger and more likely to be
encountered in the open sea.
The press occasionally carries stories about
The vessel in the picture is 7.2 metres long with unmanned merchant ships being the future and
an unladen weight of 5.3 tonnes and capable of there is much research going on towards this
being controlled remotely and/or autonomously. end.
There was talk of
unmanned ships too when
your correspondent was
studying Naval
Architecture in the early
1970s. He retains his
scepticism.
Much has changed since
then but the reliability of all
the myriad systems on
board a ship will still be the
limiting factor.
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