The maritime transportation industry is responsible for 80% of international trade. It is a highly regulated industry in most fronts, from cargo management (e.g. container dimensions) to shipping fairways. While the regulations in place aim to reduce environmental impact and decrease fixed and operating costs, this is not a conducive environment for technological innovation. The industry transport method has arguably lacked a significant structural change for over 100 years.

The main technical issues we aim to address are speed, automation, ecological impact and safety by inspiring from the streamlined morphology of cetaceans. Notably, while all maritime transportation takes place at the water-air barrier, most of marine life lives underwater. Using modern submarine design as a template, combined with the nature of cetacean body structure, our goal is to design a Biomimetic Automated Underwater Vehicle (BAUV). The streamlined design of the cetaceans are a source of inspiration to produce a faster and more efficient BAUV than current submarines. A hydrodynamic issue in submarines arises due to their rounded bow, because of their large sonar and torpedo tubes. However, our purposes would not include these design restrictions, thus would allow us to increase the hydrodynamics of the vehicle. Moreover, automation of cargo ships is a challenge that several companies are taking on with the goal of reducing risks to human life and improving travel efficiency.  Rough seas and piracy pose consistent threats to cargo ships, despite efforts to minimize their effects. By submerging the vehicle, safety and efficiency would be considerably improved. Therefore, we want to automate the transport vehicle such that BAUV travels port to port without any human life onboard. Further, cargo ships negatively affect the environment in several ways: massive amounts of carbon emissions, immense surface and underwater noise that disrupts marine life, cargo loss that incurs costs, contaminates, and potentially disastrous oil spills. Inspired by military submarines, the BAUV’s power source can be a zero emission clean energy source in the form of a nuclear reactor. Nuclear power massively reduces the dependency for refueling, and minimizes the carbon footprint, while simultaneously, gifting the vehicle with the energy to potentially double the speed of cargo ships.

Thus, a nuclear-powered submarine would aim to capitalize on the competencies of air transport (speed), and sea travel (volume). Moreover, fuel costs represent as much as 50-60% of total ship operating costs which places a nuclear-powered vehicle at a competitive advantage for cost efficiency. The value of this design lies in the lowered variable costs, improved safety, and reduced environmental impact.