Western Morning News (Saturday)
Crossing the Atlantic without a crew
As part of our six-part series to commemorate the sailing of the Mayflower in September, 1620, the creators of a new historical travel guide, Mayflower – A Seachange, have interviewed 20 people from around Plymouth to find out what life was like 400 years
THIS week we speak to Brett Phaneuf, the managing director of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship created in partnership with IBM, which was launched last week in Plymouth as part of the start of the Mayflower 400 commemorations.
Brett Phaneuf is a polymath, a science and engineering visionary who recognises that, however clever or brilliant the marine craft that you create, the sea always wins.
Brett’s firm is M Subs Ltd. Their location in Estover is hidden away in an industrial estate of all kinds of businesses. Not easy to find, these large, uniform, bunker-like units are where a team of 60 people are busily creating state-of-the-art world-class marine engineering inventions.
The team is led by Brett, a physics graduate who loved deepsea diving, before joining the American military and studying for an anthropology and classical studies degree, which led him to underwater archaeology.
From this, his passion for oceanography grew, along with his love of exploration and marine science.
“I was inspired by Doctor Bob Ballard, a marine geologist and oceanographer who worked in underwater archaeology using an underwater robotic craft, the Argo, to find the most famous shipwrecks, including the Titanic in September, 1985,” he says.
Brett founded ProMare, a charitable research foundation company, which quickly grew, with an increasing requirement for oceanographic and marine exploration vehicles. It was so successful that a business arm was formed in Connecticut and
Plymouth in 2006, Submergence Group LLC & M Subs Ltd, respectively, to build submersibles for the American Defense Department for deep-sea research.
Brett has always had a visionary side to his work and so, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower crossing to America, he decided to crowdfund a modern high-tech sea-craft, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, a vessel capable of conducting autonomous scientific research, with the endurance and reliability to operate remotely in all corners of the globe.
It is being built by his team to embrace ground-breaking technologies in design, propulsion, control and artificial intelligence, all in the spirit of the original Pilgrims’ trip that changed the world.
Brett explains: “We thought it would be great to launch the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS), powered by renewable energy and created by M Subs, ProMare and Plymouth University, as part of the Mayflower 400th anniversary commemorations.” When possible, the craft will be programmed to follow the same 3,220 mile route as the original ship, using fuel-cells, wind and solar technologies.
Last week, the ship was named with Plymouth Gin as it was officially launched by the United States Ambassador, Robert Wood Johnson, in the presence of the Dutch Ambassador, Karel van Oosterom, and the First Sea Lord Admiral, Tony Radakin.
Despite the many restrictions, people from the city watched eagerly from the shoreline and streets above at a social distance, while enjoying the pomp and ceremony that befits such a major scientific breakthrough and the beautiful engineering of a marine ship designed to research our oceans to gain a better understanding of how to navigate the next 400 years.
Owing to the coronavirus pandemic’s global restrictions, the ship’s maiden research voyage has been delayed until April, 2021, after extensive trials in Plymouth Sound, when it will be released on its mission, which will be filming itself crossing the Atlantic along the original Mayflower’s route, and simultaneously, conducting marine research and operations in remote corners of the globe.
Thanks to Brett’s expertise in learning from the underwater archaeology of sunken ships and submarines, he plans to use his engineering skills to go deeper, stay down longer and discover more about how the ocean works.
“I am, in truth, more interested in how to get there and extract as much data as possible. I like to work out where we are going next, how to integrate new technology, and how to explore at a faster rate and in a safer way,” he added.
“I see the term AI [artificial intelligence] as a bit of a popular buzzword, with few people understanding what it really means. For me, it is merely vast data collection and the development and application of new mathematical algorithms that facilitate constant machine learning – essentially, to recognise patterns and work out what they mean and how to optimise a system.”
Autonomy can mean different things in technology. With the Mayflower Autonomous ship, or Brett’s underwater vehicles, it means determining its own course and way of doing things when confronted with a novel situation.
“My machines,” Brett explains,
“learn how to fine tune themselves and optimise the job, which is very useful in a submarine when under attack, or to avoid a collision with ships on the surface.
“An M Subs machine is an extremely cutting-edge and valuable piece of marine equipment and is rarer than a Ferrari. It is a hyperexotic underwater spaceship-like vessel of the sea, costing between $5 million and $40 million.”
M Subs has shown us how far technology has come in 400 years by creating a commemorative artificially intelligent sea craft capable of navigating its own way, as part of a discovery expedition, across the Atlantic, following the Mayflower route, whose progress can be watched by the entire world as it collects vital environmental data and transforms how marine research is done.
Regarding the future, Brett added: “The world needs to realise that most people do not understand how advanced technology works. To them, it might as well be magic.
“More technology just gives us more exciting choices but, paradoxically, less time. However, in the face of increasing automation of human tasks, we need to think about how to give those affected by it, who will increasingly have more leisure time than 400 years ago, a sense of purpose and existence – and this will be one of mankind’s greatest challenges in the future.”
Mayflower – A Sea Change can be ordered from Bookfluential – https:// wordfluential. com/ seachange – or from Amazon: www. amazo n . c o. uk/ May f l o w e rSeachange-Dawn-Bebe/ dp/1999349326