The revolution in shipping using ghost vessels with hardly any crew on board.

The missile test was a crucial step for the Navy's autonomous vessel program, an extensive initiative to develop 21 robot ships over the next few years. The program is a direct response to countries such as China, which have been building sophisticated missile technology to target ships that approach their shores. Robot vessels could be a cheaper and more effective way to protect the seas while putting fewer sailors' lives at risk, former naval officers said.

"Seagulls," said Andy Stanford-Clark, excitedly. In fact, you can totally ignore them." Stanford-Clark, the chief technology officer for IBM in the U.K. and Ireland, was exuding nervous energy. It was the afternoon before the morning when, at 4 a.m. British Summer Time, IBM's Mayflower Autonomous Ship -- a crewless, fully autonomous trimaran piloted entirely by IBM's A.I., and built by non-profit ocean research company ProMare -- was set to commence its voyage from Plymouth, England. to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. And now, after countless tests and hundreds of thousands of hours of simulation training, it was about to set sail for real. Stanford-Clark was running through the potential risks. Seagulls, he pointed out, were something of a false alarm. From an image-recognition perspective, they were a challenge because they had a tendency of getting right up in the camera lens so that they looked like enormous winged obstacles that needed to be avoided at all costs. But they had a tendency ...

A robotic cargo vessel has passed through the Panama Canal for the first time. The uncrewed ship, an Overlord Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) of the US Navy, made a 4700 nautical mile (8700 kilometre) journey including passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific almost entirely without human assistance. Pentagon spokesman Josh Frey says the vessel was in autonomous mode for over 97 per cent of the trip's length. A remote crew assisted when needed.

Sometime next April, a 50-foot-long autonomous ship will shake loose the digital bonds of its human controllers, scan the horizon with radar, and set a course westward across the Atlantic. The Mayflower Autonomous Ship won't be taking commands from a human captain like the first Mayflower did during its crossing back in 1620. Instead it will get orders from an "AI captain" built by programmers at IBM. The Mayflower's computing system processes data from 30 onboard sensors and six cameras to help the ship sail across the ocean, obey shipping rules (like how to pass other ships at sea), and control electrical and mechanical systems like the engine and rudder. There won't be anyone on board if something goes wrong, although it does have to send a daily report to a human operator back in the UK.

Navy chiefs are planning a fleet of "killer" robot ships which can think for themselves, we can reveal. They will have stealth technology, advanced radar, lasers and rail-guns capable of firing shells at 4,500mph. The vessels will use artificial intelligence – computerised brains – to work out tactics far more quickly than humans. Scientists say they will operate on their own or from a control room on shore – or act as mother ships to a fleet of smaller craft designed to overwhelm conventional ships. The Royal Navy says humans would set the limits of a battle and let the ships do the rest.

A cutting-edge, £1 million robot ship will cross the Atlantic Ocean unmanned next year to commemorate 400 years since the maiden voyage of the Mayflower to the USA. The Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) will set off on its pioneering, 2,750-mile trip in September 2020, following in the trail of its namesake 400 years earlier. The 15-metre long, catamaran-style ship will be powered by state-of-the-art renewable energy. It will be unmanned but will have marine AI on board, and will be steered from a control room in Plymouth, Devon - where the original Mayflower set off from. It will carry three research pods, containing sensors and other equipment, which scientists hope will pave the way for ground-breaking research into ocean conditions for autonmous navigation.

Meet Project Overlord: The Marines' Plan for Robot Ships to Move Their Soldiers and Supplies Earlier this year Navy leaders requested $400 million from Congress for two LUSVs in the 2020 proposed defense budget, with eight more to be purchased over the next five years. WASHINGTON – U.S. Marine Corps leaders plan to capitalize on a U.S. Navy plan to develop a Large Unmanned Surface Vessel (LUSV) for long-range resupply missions, and troop transport for Marine Corps warfighters. Smith made his comments today at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) Defense, Protection, and Security conference in Washington. The future Navy LUSV could rendezvous with Navy amphibious assault ships offshore to move Marines and supplies quickly where needed, at perhaps lower costs and less risk to human ship crews than is possible today, Smith told AUVSI attendees in a keynote address. Unmanned systems "are less expensive than people," Smith pointed out in his address.

In the hope of preventing a catastrophic asteroid from colliding with Earth, a respected astrophysicist has advised that governments should be spending'hundreds of millions' each year on defence systems. Speaking at a press conference this week, Lord Martin Rees, UK Astronomer Royal, said that humans are'vulnerable to impacts from outside.' He suggested that a two-pronged approach would be needed to ensure Earth could survive an asteroid collision – a better detection system, and a deflection system. Experts have warned that humans are not prepared for an asteroid impact, and should one head for Earth, there's not much we can do about it (stock image) Nasa is planning an ambitious mission that will see a robotic spaceship visit an asteroid to create an orbiting base for astronauts. The robot shipwill pluck a large boulder off the space rock and sling it aroundthe moon, becoming a destination to prepare for futurehuman missions to Mars.