Shipping: First fully-automated container cargo ship to sail from the Port of London to the Port of...
...New York City (passing the Statue of Liberty upon arrival).
To win this challenge (and Future Challenges #1 - #3 and #6 - #8), the program must include a learning algorithm, must transmit at least once per operational day what it has learned to the company that developed the program, and must download updates from that central server.
Future Challenges:
1) First fully-automated container cargo ship to sail from the Port of Tokyo to the Port of San Francisco (traveling underneath the Golden Gate Bridge on its arrival).
2) First commercial fleet to add a fully-automated cargo ship to its fleet and to regularly use it.
3) First commercial fleet (with at least 100 ships in its fleet) to convert all of its cargo ships to be fully-automated.
4) First coastal nation to only allow fully-automated cargo ships to enter its harbors.
5) First major coastal nation (with a population of 50 million or more) to only allow fully-automated cargo ships to enter its harbors.
6) First commercial cargo robo-ship to be powered by microwaves from an orbiting power station satellite. [Without any human crew members on board a robo-ship, microwaves from an orbiting power station satellite could be focused on it to power the ship once it is outside of a harbor. An added benefit of this set-up is that piracy of these ships will not happen as they will be deadly for pirates to board.] To win this challenge, the robo-ship must only be powered by microwaves and batteries. [The batteries to be used when the ship is entering or exiting a harbor as no harbor will allow microwaves to be beamed to ships in their ports. The batteries to be recharged by the beamed-down microwaves once out in open ocean and when tied to the pier.] These microwave-powered robo-ships must be entirely painted medium vibrant reflective green and have large green flashing lights that can been seen for miles to warn human-crewed ships to steer clear of them due to them being bathed in deadly microwaves.
7) First commercial cargo robo-ship to be powered by beamed-down microwaves and batteries to travel from Shanghai, China to San Francisco, California, USA. To win this future challenge, the ship must be carrying at least 80% of its maximum cargo weight and pass under the Golden Gate Bridge upon its arrival.
8) First commercial cargo fleet to have all of its ships be robo-ships and powered by beamed-down microwaves and batteries.
Discussion:If you would like to discuss this challenge with others, click here to go to this challenge's discussion forum.