Make your boat self-docking!?

Scary thought... Especially as they call it boat PARKING!

Same as with self driving cars, I doubt you can get an insurance...

Well, it's an Italian Company that developed the thing.
I suppose they might have been inspired by the Concordia.
Their computerised system can't be much worse than a crook captain, after all...

It needs to have an audio/visual alarm so those nearby can be alerted and man the bumpers.

I read that as meaning it just repeats what the "driver" did last time without regard for any difference in wind, current, or driver skills. If the guy rammed the dock at 5 knots last time, it will do it the next time but provide a warning buzzer just before impact.

But it probably has a very attractive control panel.

Maybe if you ram the dock it would be a good idea to rerecord the process. Driving, and accounting for (as especially paying attention to) shifting variables like wind and current and random obstacles is something that computers will be able to do better than the best humans within the lifespan of people living today. Google cars are much safer to drive in or around than regular cars, and a cumper may have a hardware failure and crash, but that happens far less regularly than a human has an attentional failure.
The most difficult part of this kind of maneuver is the pathing, right now they solve that by copying the pathing of a previous user and no doubt use bow thrusters and pods to compensate for shifts in wind and current. It's probably pretty shaky tech right now, and you might not have insurance coverage for it, but in 50 years it will probably be impossible to get insurance on a big ship with out it.

I think that both with cars and boats, it is no big deal to develop the systems so they can do this in a future infrastructure, also developed for this. But you can not integrate them in what we have today. A computer can not determine if an approaching boat is going to hit you or is the harbour tender coming with your mooring lines...

And I have seen the outcome after mate maneuvers by using radar inside the port, nearly kill two persons.
I think in the future the insurance branch want you to have computer assist driving on any vehicle.........

Yesterday I saw a boat entering a port when a young girl jumped in the water only two meters from their bow. The captain put in reverse within one second and the girl escaped. She was so close that it was only that the captain saw her jumping, before she was under the bow and out of sight... Don´t say that a sonar could have saved her...

There are sadly examples of captains that weren't paying attention. We have computers now that can catch this sort of thing with a camera, while at the same time watching what is behind them and what is off to the sides Even the best humans need to take turns switching from paying attention to one thing at a time. It's just a matter of tailoring them specifically for the task of close quarters water surface maneuvers.

Absolutely, but who want to have cameras all around the waterline and a supercomputer with tailored programs just to dock a boat? It would probably cost ten times the boat... It is the same as with all the "apps" people are inventing, just because it can be done, the demand is often limited.

You don't have captains eyes all around the waterline of your boat. Two cameras mounted just outside and above the front windscreen, one mounted off the back, and one off either side of the pilot house and your system has better eyes than any human standing at the wheel. The processing power is going to be sub supercomputer too, probably enough power to get it done in 5-6 of the latest generation game consoles, all of it would fit in one small server rack. The difficulty isn't in the hardware, it's in the software. While every individual component has already been done before getting them all to work together perfectly every single time is going to take some serious man hours. aying the firms that figure it out back for their hard work is going to be the bulk of the cost of these systems for a while after they come out. Moore's law has profound impacts on hardware costs.

This would not have saved the girl yesterday, she was under the bow, not visible from the bridge. We developed a system for assisting with docking on a 40 m motor sailer already in 1979 and there we had truck radars giving the distance in three directions around the stern. But it was not connected to any autopilot. I don´t trust computers when it comes to "see" what is going on around you...

So, what do you use instead of jetliners, for long distance trips?

My 993s. Actually, I was onboard a SAS MD80 when we almost had a mid-air-collision and I was the only one who saw the other plane coming. It was a one second difference from disaster...

See? That MD80 must have been from the pre-TCAS era.
When it comes to see what is going on around you, trusting computers is better than trusting just luck, after all.
Besides, a vintage neunelfer for long distance trips?
You must be joking....

Porsche 993s

On highways with speedlimits, yes that would be a pain in the neck. But on a German Autobahn, a perfect car.

B.t.w. the 993 was the last real Porsche 911 with the aircooled engine and the original Porsche sound. The only little design problem this car had, was the high temperature of the exhaust mufflers. Those mufflers heated up the rear tires so much, they lasted sometimes less than 10.000 km. But that´s only money .

And TCAS does not always help, remember the midair collision over the Lake Constance some years ago. The Cargo aircraft was TCAS equipped. The Swiss ATC controller screwed up but the aircrews obeyed his advices over the TCAS warnings.

I have made more than 250.000 km's in vintage 911's and after a 2000 km trip I am usually not even tired... Love to drive those cars on long trips.

About the NMAC the MD80 could not do much to avoid it, it was a Falcon climbing that almost hit us from below right. The turbulence then hit our port wing, so it was extremely close. On the ground they thought we collided, I read in a report...

I saw the Falcon in about this angle for almost a minute in advance and finally I could see the two pilots in their white shirts and sunglasses just as they passed below my front row seat. We were climbing north from Milano and the Falcon came from Bergamo. We were at about 20.000 feet.

The air hostess standing at the flight deck door saw a glimpse of the Falcon and asked the pilots who confirmed it was a close call...

Too bad there are not more technical details on it, the fatal flaw I see in it is that it appears to only use 1 Position Reference System. Granted, the coupling of inertial sensors will help with error trapping if the PRS starts to degrade, but in tight quarters I am guessing the position variance could be enough to ruin someone's day.