Autonomous ships can see through fog using sound
Modern cargo vessels are ditching human lookouts for acoustic sensors that 'hear' the shape of the ocean, allowing them to dodge obstacles at fifty knots.
While human eyes struggle to see a few meters ahead in heavy fog, new autonomous ships in Japan and South Korea are navigating at fifty knots with total clarity. These vessels use acoustic Doppler technology to bounce sound waves off objects, effectively 'seeing' through the thickest mist at distances up to 20 kilometers. This data is fed into neural networks that process 10 terabytes of information every hour, allowing the ship to make split-second decisions that human crews simply cannot.
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