NAUTOMATE: LIFE-SAVING AUTONOMOUS BOATS
Discover the marine rescue technology that removes humans from dirty, dull and dangerous missions
WORDS AILSA HARVEY
N automate is an autonomous control system designed by BAE Systems to navigate marine missions without a human pilot or any human presence on board. By taking humans away from the monotony of all-day surveillance missions and keeping troops out of harm’s way on particularly dangerous excursions, Nautomate’s developers envisage its self-steering capabilities as the future of military missions.
The intelligent system wasn’t designed for one particular vessel, but was built to be incorporated into a fleet of military vessels and can be adopted for civilian use too. The software can adapt to new mission-specific algorithms, called plug-ins, that are added to the existing system so that as autonomous technology becomes more advanced, new software can be added to Nautomate boats.