Hands Off the Helm: Simrad Puts Self-Docking on Factory-Built Boats

The last fifty feet of any trip, the slow crawl into a slip with a crosswind pushing the bow, is the part owners quietly dread. Simrad's new AutoCaptain system is built to take that moment off the owner's plate entirely. It reads the surroundings through a pair of stereo cameras, runs what it sees through machine learning, and then works the boat into the dock on its own by way of Mercury's joystick controls. What matters for the American marina crowd is that this is not a one-off demonstration rig. It is designed for production boats, the kind that come off the line and into the slips of Florida and the Northeast every season.

With reporting from Yachting.