Page 23: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (December 2020)

“In the scheme of things, the autonomy system is a relatively small portion, price-wise, of what can be a multi-million dollar asset. It can start to be comparable to the cost of a wage for a year or a small increase in safety or fuel economy.”

Chris Allard

CEO, Metal Shark

Watch Chris Allard and Michael Johnson discuss trends in autonomous boats on Maritime Reporter TV: bit.ly/33wkvvJ

Metal Shark technologies forward, you’re ? rst looked at with skepticism.” for example, the different propulsion types. When he looks at

He emphasizes the importance of continually evolving the the commercial maritime sector, Johnson sees a massive but technology. “Another of the hurdles is, to be honest …this fragmented market, a market that looks more like the U.S. is hard stuff,” said Johnson. “It’s not automation; automa- trucking market with thousands of smaller companies work- tion today is usually more of a single signal data response, ing alongside a smaller number of larger companies. like say a governor on an engine. But this is autonomy and “We’ve worked to build a standardized product, a prod- autonomy is many, many data streams coming together, more uct that can then be installed in a number of different vessel complex algorithms, prioritization of messages, data shed- types; working with a number of different propulsion types; ding, and a lot of these areas like, we bring machine learning working with feeds from different sensors.” and AI into our computer vision side of our product. Many of Sea Machine’s ? agship product is the SM-300. “At the end these are new ? elds of engineering.” of this year, we’ll release 1.8,” Johnson said. “We are product driven company with advanced technology at the core, but

Autonomy for All we really measure ourselves by our product. By the end of

The Sea Machines approach to autonomy differs substan- this year, we should be at system number 54 commitments, tially, for example, from the automotive industry, where and well over 40,000 nautical miles (where) we’ve tested the groups of technologists work on solutions for just one brand system.” of vehicle, for example. Johnson’s team today is a team of 30, and he anticipates “When you look at other autonomy companies in other sec- growing about 40%. Just as importantly, Sea Machines will tors, they’re usually wedded to a vehicle type,” said John- soon launch a major new innovation. “Next year we’ll release son. “You have 250 autonomy engineers that are working at our ? rst computer vision as a sensor product. A big step to

Tesla, and they’re building autonomous systems that work empower the technology further is to be able to perceive the on a Tesla; or looking at one of our investors at Toyota, they environment better, get better situational awareness and for probably have the largest autonomy team, but they’re build- three years now, we’ve centered on vision. Our ? rst computer ing for Toyota.” vision sensor next year will ? rst be available within our SM-

What Sea Machines has done is standardize its product, 300 system.” building a number of libraries for the interfaces to support, www.marinelink.com 23

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