Uncrewed

Maybe you read the title as “unscrewed?”  My autocorrect thought that’s what I intended.  Hmm.  I considered leaving the title that way, but wrestled with the helm on autocorrect and took the title from the image.  I need to crew this blog mechanism after all. 

I’ve alluded to these uncrewed vessels before in this blog, and they’ve been busy and attracted my attention this weekend as well as right now.   Since they show on AIS, I’m just wondering what they look like as vessel/instruments skim the surface acknowledging three-dimensional patterns, capable of observing and being observed. 

Above was uncrewed instrument 15 and below, 19.  Hardly folkloric vessel names?!!  Since robots do not choose their own name, are we the creators that lacking in imagination?  Another interesting detail here is the white print way at the bottom on the right side of image. 15 uses Atlantic Beach as an AIS source, and 19 uses 15.  There’s a hierarchy.

By the way, it appears to be this USV 

Here’s a closeup of the image of 19 on AIS. The wheels on the trailer show scale.

But I learned something, a wider pattern.  It’s this:  wherever thing 15 and thing 19 go, a magenta vessel is there too . . .  Free Time.  Magenta is for recreational vessels.  Below you see her track.

Furthermore, notice that Free Time uses 19 as an AIS source, or at least was doing so when I grabbed that image! A contractor relationship exists there,  I suppose, but I also wonder what to call the crew of Free Time . . . USV command and control officer?  USV commodore?  survey boat tech?  If crew of Free Time rotates through, 15 and 19 can work 24/7.  Here’s a question . . . when they do come to dock, do they dock themselves, get a slip in the water, or are they lifted in/out by a crane?  If so, is Free Time actually a recreational cargo vessel?  It seems also likely a common boat name.

Below is a segment of the track for 19.   In the image below, the intermittent track of 19 intrigues me.

Here was 15 at a slice in time this morning.

All AIS grabs and any errors, WVD, who’s so intrigued by these largely invisible hints of exotic tech in the boro that he’s only tenuously in control of the alleged spellchecking autocorrecter.  This  tech, now exotic, might in 20 or 50 years from now be as ubiquitous as  . . . say . . . ATM machines, which began to appear less than 50 years ago.   And this stereotype of trackless oceans and unplumbed seafloors, parts of them are as mapped digitally as  . . . our own mouths on the dentist’s x-rays. . .

Keep your eyes open and you may see a USV or a swarm of them out there.

And to consider alternate exotic tech, here‘s a story I read recently about kayak-like and lethal applications, and it led me to the long history of USVs.