
Autonomous Boats Could Service Some Cities, Reducing Road Traffic - rbanffy
https://cacm.acm.org/news/228215-autonomous-boats-could-service-some-cities-reducing-road-traffic/fulltext
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bdamm
This article reads like a freshman essay. Autonomous boats! Self assembly! 3D
printing!

Ignores the big issues: * For large boats, fuel is expensive. The person
operating the boat is a tiny fraction of the cost. * Maybe electricity is the
idea? The article doesn't say. * Shifting city garbage to the night?
Collecting aggregate garbage isn't really the problem. The problem is getting
it from the alley to the truck. No boat is going to help here, unless you're
in Venice.

This article doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Even the model doesn't
accurately represent the dreams of the article; it clearly is not a 2x4m hull.

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ardit80
I have used NYC ferry service, and it is awesome. It is a resounding success
with people that use it, but it costs the city money. (The fare is the same as
subway $2.75 but the true cost is $5.60+ per trip).

[https://www.ferry.nyc/routes-and-schedules/](https://www.ferry.nyc/routes-
and-schedules/)

The other problems is that it doesn't run often enough, and in good days it
can get overcrowded, but in bad weather days it is underused.

Having a fleet of autonomous boats will allow to:

1\. Run the service more often, (smaller but more frequent boats)

2\. Have more routes/trips

3\. Scalability. Have more boats ready for peak demand. (it is harder to scale
when you have hire and train humans, but if it is all autonomous, that it is
simply of an issue just buying more hardware and deploying them on demand).

~~~
nradov
They might _eventually_ be able to cut costs a little by automating the job of
the helmsman (coxswain) in confined waterways where there are few navigational
hazards. But automated ferries will still need trained seamen on board for
safety to deal with the situation in case of a man overboard, flooding, fire,
or power loss. A boat isn't like a car where it can just pull over on the side
of the road and the passengers get out.

~~~
walshemj
The USN though they could skimp on training on ship operations.

Oh lets see that's not working so well as quite a number of captains and
senior staff are getting (rightly) crucified at courts martial.

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sandworm101
Nope. Never. Not going to be a thing. Have a look at any busy harbour. Look at
all the various ships, aircraft, and even animals moving about. Ships need
humans onboard. They need the adaptability to handle strange situations in
strange circumstances. They also need to anticipate how the other human-
operated ships will react, something AI is horrible at atm. And at night? It
doesn't get any easier at night.

Harbours are the hardest part for ships. Built me an autopilot that can
reliably handle ocean crossings (not course holding, actual safe ship
operation) first before telling me that it can handle a busy harbour.

~~~
forapurpose
> Harbours are the hardest part for ships

I know almost nothing about it, but don't ships have to hire local pilots to
navigate harbors, due to the local knowledge and complexity?

~~~
jellicle
Yes:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/nyregion/an-
apprenticeshi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/nyregion/an-
apprenticeship-to-become-a-sandy-hook-pilot.html)

~~~
frankharv
That dude is linehandling with a tie and white shirt. HAHAHA. Fake new site so
it doesn't surprise me. I deal with the new sailors who come out of these
maritime institutes. There is no substitute for OJT.

Can you imagine getting the tie pulled into the wildcat. Youch. That has to be
a OSHA no-no. Dopey picture. Like $70K fine in my world.

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carapace
Actual article (this one is a teaser): [https://news.mit.edu/2018/fleet-
autonomous-boats-service-cit...](https://news.mit.edu/2018/fleet-autonomous-
boats-service-cities-reducing-road-traffic-0523)

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cascom
why do these boats need to be autonomous?

~~~
jdavis703
In San Francisco the typical ferry requires at least 3 crew members. There's a
captain, two deckhands and sometimes a coast guard officer (I'm assuming to
prevent hijackings which an autonomous system wouldn't be liable to).

A few years ago when BART workers went on strike the ferry service had to call
in all available workers. The people they brought in were clearly amateur,
they needed a lot of supervision and seemed to struggle with assisting with
the docking/undocking procedures. Boating requires a lot of labor, and it
seems like there isn't much of it that's trained and ready to work.

~~~
spaceflunky
Why doesn't SF have a better ferry system? Almost everything in the bay area
is within 5min of... the bay. Seems like a no-brainer. What's the hold up?

~~~
wristmittens
Outside of San Francisco, a lot of the bay shoreline is not much more than
acres of foot-deep mud and salt flats.

[http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/18651.shtml](http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/18651.shtml)

Sierra Point, Coyote Point, Redwood City are the only current viable ports
along the south. Creating new ports for a ferry system would involve a lot of
dredging in addition to the infrastructure construction, which is not only
costly but severely impacts the already damaged wetlands that line the bay.

~~~
danans
I wonder if hovercraft might be an option that wouldn't require the dredging.
I.e. [https://www.hovertravel.co.uk/](https://www.hovertravel.co.uk/)

EDIT: I guess it's been considered before in 2011 [1] But it appears that the
hovercraft themselves were more expensive and carried half as many people. But
compared to the cost of dredging for ferries, maybe it's still cheaper?

1\. [https://www.mercurynews.com/2011/11/01/east-bay-looks-to-
hov...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2011/11/01/east-bay-looks-to-hovercraft-
for-ferry-service/)

~~~
mmt
> But compared to the cost of dredging for ferries, maybe it's still cheaper?

I think the point is that it doesn't matter, if it's simply not cheap
_enough_.

The shallowness of the estuarial coastline _significantly_ drives up the cost
(be it with dredging or more exotic technologies like hovercraft), and that's
the (short) answer to why we don't have more ferry service.

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reustle
This is really nice and all but I'm pretty sure shortage of workers is not the
reason this doesn't already happen. But if this helps to raise money / grants,
I'm for it.

~~~
jandrese
It may not be a shortage of workers, but that hiring the required workers
makes the boat too costly to operate at the price point they want.

That said, given the number of variables you have to consider when operating
watercraft it seems like a challenging problem to completely automate.

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dawnerd
I could see a company like Disney using autonomous boats for WDW as it’s all a
pretty confined area. If you haven’t been there, they use a lot of boats to
ferry people around. (Actually think they already are using some autonomy for
their show rafts but not 100% sure)

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rm_-rf_slash
First time in a while an HN headline made me laugh.

I’ve lived in the Finger Lakes of Upstate New York most of my life. I’ve
sailed, done jet skis, onboard motor, offboard, name it. Loads of boating
experience all around.

And yet every single time I dock it’s always a struggle to time and execute it
_exactly right_ , even with fair weather, even with someone else to jump off
and tie the boat up to the dock.

Autonomous ferries are the dumbest idea I have read on this site in a long
time. The complexity is light-years beyond the trials and tribulations of
Tesla’s “Autopilot.” People could drown, or at least keep themselves afloat
while the water ruins whatever electronics they brought aboard.

I would sooner trust an autonomous car than an autonomous ferry, and that’s
after reading about those Uber/Tesla crashes.

~~~
maxander
Have you ever tried to fly a quadcopter drone manually? It's _really hard_ ; I
could barely get one to hover, after hours of practice. Yet AI quadcopters
that can fly in ornate formations and execute complex maneuvers are well known
[1]. Don't discount what AI can or can't do just because it's hard for humans.

Other advantages in ferries' favor; unlike most streets, the docks for
autonomous ferries could be designed around the AI's capabilities. Also,
ferries don't travel at 70 MPH. :)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4)
(6-year-old video!)

~~~
jellicle
Things not in ferries' favor: wind, water currents, depth, other shipping
which is often not very maneuverable and yet moving fast, no lanes, complex
rules about giving way to other boats, and no ability to fail safe (just
turning everything off is dangerous, possibly deadly).

Ferries crash real good, too (read to the end, about the second crash):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Staten_Island_Ferry_crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Staten_Island_Ferry_crash)

~~~
frankharv
Did the ferry's crash because they were autonomous?

No quite the opposite. Human error.

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justboxing
Personally I would freak out. It would be just like being in an airplane
completely on Autopilot with no pilots even for emergency. Except that this is
on water, and not air.

~~~
jschwartzi
It would certainly be a novel way to kidnap a bunch of people over the
Internet.

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txsh
This has the same problem as Musk's pneumatic tubes. When it fails, people are
trapped. One mistake and you have a boat full of dead people.

