I have been very, very busy recently with my job. Finally that hard work is starting to produce some excellent results! And I can now safely reveal some things about my project here.
This summer I have taken an ordinary speedboat and I have turned it into an autonomous vehicle. I take the boat out pretty much every day and some time ago I wrote enough software to finally relieve myself of the chore of actually driving it. Now I basically let the boat drive me around the waterways of Buffalo while I do experiments, collect data, and test the latest hardware and software improvements.
Recently we invited some local journalists to come and check out the progress. They produced some very gracious reports about the project.
This image was taken by J. Viera from Buffalo Business First.
And comes from an article accurately titled A boat is learning how to drive itself on the Erie Canal. That is very true. The Erie Canal turns out to be an ideal test route for my boat.
And then there is this report on WIVB channel 4.
These reporters did a fine job but of course the story is quite a bit more technically complex from an engineering standpoint. Our business plan prevents me from writing detailed instructions on how exactly this marvel was achieved but it is sufficient to say that it is not trivial. If you’re interested in that kind of thing, chat with me in person about it.
We invited the press to check out our work now because it is pretty much the end of the season for guests who are not also interested in a cold weather adventure. That of course means my season is hardly over. As the autumn descends I’m still going to be out on the water every day. Unlike normal boaters, for me the cold is a welcome relief. It is nice to watch the leaves change from day to day. It is not just spectacular scenery — every time I see new color in the trees I think of how my machine learning training sets just improved!