AMAZING SELF SAILING BOATS

From a modern-day Mayflower to flying water taxis, autonomous vessels are taking their crews farther than ever across the world's waterways

-  AILSA HARVEY

ALICE TO THE RESCUE

A LICE, or 'A Lifesaver In Case of Emergency', is an autonomous boat that can scan the sea in search of people who are lost or in distress, as well as pinpointing and extinguishing fires at sea. Engineered by Dutch company DPRZ, ALICE sends out sonar signals to analyse its surroundings and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to work out what it's looking at. When the boat spots a person or the other objects that it's preprogrammed to detect, its GPS system sends data of the precise location back to headquarters to update human teams. ALICE uses a thermal-imaging camera that rotates 360 degrees and can detect the heat of a human body from 750 metres away. Using this camera, ALICE can also spot a fire. The boat carries fire-extinguishing equipment so that as well as searching for people at sea, ALICE can put out fires on ships.

It can be also deployed by fire brigades along city canals and harbours.