Callboats has become the first company in the world to offer an autonomous water taxi service between the Finnish city of Helsinki and the nearby archipelago. These solar-electric boats are designed to significantly reduce prices and address the shortage of captains. The company has been trialling a passenger service delivered via a smartphone app for the past 12 months and is now moving towards autonomous operations, with human captains supporting them remotely to handle edge cases for several ships at a time.
CEO Peter Ostberg told the Helsinki Times: "Sixty to 70 percent of transport costs in the archipelago comes from paying captains. With autonomy, one captain can operate five water taxis, resulting in more profit margins during the short-haul season and lower prices for consumers."
Under current regulations, these first autonomous ships will still require at least one crew member to be on board at all times. But the ships are able to do it all themselves, using a variety of 360-degree cameras and sensors to monitor the environment, track and avoid hazards, navigate waterways, and automatically deploy ramps at embarkation and disembarkation docks.
The yacht itself has 10 seats, runs four 10kW electric pod thrusters and has a maximum speed of 9 knots (10 mph, 17 km/h). The standard 60 kWh battery provides about 9 hours of range at a slower speed of 6 knots (7 mph, 11 km/h). There's a 1.5kW solar array on the roof that can charge the battery for 8-10kWh on a good day, with the rest supplied via an 11kW three-phase charger.
Callboats’ autonomous boats will make short voyages between Helsinki and the islands of Cotiluoto, Vilaluoto and Malkasaari, traveling up to a few miles per round trip. Callboats said autonomous operations would improve access to the islands because there is a shortage of captains willing to do such repetitive work.
The short video below shows an early test version of similar autonomous software running on a smaller six-seat vessel.