NEW WAY TO NAVIGATE
A NEW APP AIMS TO OFFER BETTER-THAN-EVER AUTO ROUTING.
Up until the 17th century, sailors braved the ocean by sheer grit, line of sight, compass and, in many instances, a bit of sheer luck. By 1731, British Mathematician John Hadley changed the game, developing an improved version of the re ecting telescope (and grandfather of the sextant) for the purpose of using the celestial bodies to calculate one’s position at sea. For centuries, boaters might have thought it couldn’t get any better than this—until the year 2000, when the military released GPS for use by the general public. AIS whizzes Peter Williams and Owen Davies, are willing to bet that they have another game changer: the Ditch App.
e name is a reference to the nickname of the ICW where Ditch’s founding partners do most of their boating. But the touted purpose and value of this new app goes well beyond usage in that particular body of water—it’s a navigational tool for all U.S. waterways and soon enough, should Williams and Davies complete their mission, the world.
But you’re probably already asking yourself, what’s unique about this navigational app? Well, it just may be the rst one to utilize arti cial intelligence. And before you go chalking it up to be just another dent on the AI bandwagon, Williams and Davies, who admit that they’re testing often-hyped but little-proven waters, present some interesting logic to consider.
“If you think the way computers think and not the way that humans think, we have tons of data about where boats travel and AI is very good at predictive modeling,” Davies explains. “Given whatever requirements you have—a 50-foot vessel, for example—AI can really