The swells in the middle of the North Pacific were reaching nine feet when one of two engines on the diesel-powered U.S. naval ship called Sea Hunter shut down. About 1,500 nautical miles from its home base in San Diego, the 132-foot-long craft, which had been cruising at 10 knots, couldn't send a member of its crew to check out the problem--because it didn't have a crew. Sea Hunter's sleek, spiderlike silhouette, with a narrow hull and two outriggers, is a prototype of what could be a new class of autonomous warships for the U.S. Navy. Its artificial intelligence–based controls and navigation system, designed by Leidos Holdings, a defense contractor based in Reston, Va., were seven years in the making. And this maiden voyage--a more than 4,000-mile roundtrip to the giant Pearl Harbor naval station--was its first major proof of concept. Nothing like this had ever been attempted before.

In contemporary sci-fi--HBO's "Westworld," for example--sentient machines take up arms against humanity. In the real world, intelligent--and increasingly autonomous--robots are being created with weapons already in hand. More than 16 countries (not to mention terrorist groups like the Islamic State) already possess armed drones. Militaries around the globe are racing to deploy robots at sea, on the ground and in the air. For now, these machines operate mostly under human control, but that may not be the case for long.

The US Navy is set to roll out a self-driving drone warship that can hunt down enemy submarines. Dubbed the'Sea Hunter', the 132ft (40-metre) ship is designed to travel thousands of miles out at sea without a single crew member on board. Now a prototype of this submarine-stalking autonomous ship that could scour the open seas for months at a time has been officially transferred to the US Navy. The vessel is currently a surveillance platform and has no weapons on board. It can reach speed of 27 knots and uses cameras and radar to track its location and spot other ships.

A prototype autonomous ship known as the Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MDUSV) has officially been transferred to the U.S. Navy from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) after a two-year testing and evaluation program. Named "Sea Hunter," the Office of Naval Research will continue to develop the vessel from this point forward. Although there's no specific timetable for when the Sea Hunter would join active naval operations, the statement from DARPA indicated that it could happen as early as this year. The anti-submarine warfare vessel could be the first of an entirely new class of warship. "[Sea Hunter] represents a new vision of naval surface warfare that trades small numbers of very capable, high-value assets for large numbers of commoditized, simpler platforms that are more capable in the aggregate," said Fred Kennedy of DARPA.

A prototype autonomous ship known as the Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MDUSV) has officially been transferred to the U.S. Navy from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) after a two-year testing and evaluation program. Named "Sea Hunter," the Office of Naval Research will continue to develop the vessel from this point forward. Although there's no specific timetable for when the Sea Hunter would join active naval operations, the statement from DARPA indicated that it could happen as early as this year. The anti-submarine warfare vessel could be the first of an entirely new class of warship. "[Sea Hunter] represents a new vision of naval surface warfare that trades small numbers of very capable, high-value assets for large numbers of commoditized, simpler platforms that are more capable in the aggregate," said Fred Kennedy of DARPA.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. That was pretty good but doesn't quite stack up against this old ABB pancake robot video, which will always be my favorite: The title of this video is "Laser Dune Buggy vs. Drone." Slightly underwhelming, maybe, but it does have an effective range of a mile, which is impressive.

DARPA has completed its part in the development of Sea Hunter, a submarine-hunting drone ship that can cross the open seas without a human crew for months at a time. It has officially handed over the ship's development to its project partner, the Office of Naval Research, which has already begun fine-tuning the drone's autonomous features. The Navy has also renamed the drone to Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MDUSV)... which really isn't any better than its old name, Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel or ACTUV. We've got a feeling people will stick to calling it Sea Hunter, unless the Navy can come up with a snappier nickname. Defense contractor Leidos started building Sea Hunter in 2014.

Unmanned marine vehicles will use sensors & AI to crisscross the world's oceans without a crew – potentially lowering costs & improving safety for the $334B shipping sector. Just as driverless cars and trucks are bringing huge changes to the auto industry, and drones are disrupting everything from emergency response to conservation, autonomous ships are becoming the next major transportation innovation. A number of startups and governments are piloting "unmanned marine vehicles" or crewless cargo boats, with the potential to disrupt the $334B shipping industry. Rolls-Royce already demonstrated the world's first remotely operated commercial vessel earlier this year, and the US military is testing an experimental, autonomous warship called the Sea Hunter. Fully autonomous ships aren't yet allowed in international waters.

The D3000's closest international counterpart is the Sea Hunter, built for DARPA's ACTUV anti-submarine program. The 131-foot, 145 ton Sea Hunter has a speed of only 27 knots, but that's fine because it's conceived as a test ship for future unmanned operations. Conceptually, the Sea Hunter and its follow-ons would also take on roles like tracking enemy submarines and mine detection, as opposed to antiship role reflected the D3000 concept. Of course, there's nothing from stopping China from building its own sub-hunting robotic warships to make up for its historical anti-submarine warfare weakness. That China is already pitching a large robotic warship for export--and from a vendor not typically known for such offerings--suggests a high degree of confidence in the global competitiveness of the country's unmanned naval technologies.

Robotic ships are the stuff of science fiction and the United States Navy. In 2016, the Navy christened Sea Hunter, a 132-foot-long, fully autonomous vessel designed to patrol the ocean and look for submarines lurking beneath the surface. Sea Hunter is the culmination of a six-year-long project by DARPA and the Office of Naval Research to make a ship that can do a job all on its own, reporting back to human controllers without any onboard crew. If Sea Hunter was the proof of concept, Rolls-Royce wants to transform unmanned ships from a single novelty into a major part of navies around the world. Rolls-Royce (not the car company) released a concept for an autonomous naval vessel last week, one that would be powered by Rolls-Royce engines and controlled by its own systems.