Navy Tests Boat That Steers Itself

Subject: Look Mom, no hands.
Full name: Autonomous Maritime
Navigation Unmanned Surface Vehicle. AMN USV for short.
English translation: a boat that drives itself.
In development for most of the past decade, an experimental craft is now plying local waters as its developers fine-tune its thinking.
"We're not giving the boat a script -- we're giving it a goal," said Eric Hansen of the Combatant Craft Department at the Naval Surface Warfare Center.
Hansen has been pursuing the concept for several years. The boat is a collaboration between the warfare center and Spatial Integrated Systems, a Virginia Beach engineering design and development company.
The boat is not driven by remote control; there is no one with a joystick back at home plate. The vessel has its own eyes, to perceive what's around it, and its own brain, to react to that information.
Its task, for now, is to patrol off the beach at Fort Monroe in a rectangular test range that measures 0.8 by 0.45 nautical miles.

Pooch Dog wisdom here... 

I could have done this several years ago, and saved Uncle Sam a lot of money! Duct tape one of them there robo-mowers that continually cuts your grass onto a platform in the center of the boat. Well, blanking on what I was going to do next. But, piece of cake! Wouldn't take more than an afternoon, mixed in with flea scratching.

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