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Where's the adventure in all that? More fun to imagine that the boat might not be there when you surface and you'll have to rely on your own awesomeness to survive and find a way out. Or you could just pack a sat phone in a dry bag.

So many options...

The Navy already has autonomous boats running around. They've always had a human onboard until recently

So you're saying paint it like a naval boat? Problem solved! Great idea!

I guess it would be an app. And we all know cell phones never malfunction.

Be handy for the narcotraficantes though. Hack a diver's boat and hide contraband onboard when the owner submerges. If it makes it back to shore undetected, you pick it up. If the owner gets busted, it's their problem.

Have I sufficiently rained on your parade? I'm sure I can think of some more. :p

No you have not:p....I believe that begins an epic game of hide and go seek...and one hell of a party with all the Baywatch babes!!
 
.... so no laws are broken:)
There is a project being worked on that mimic's an underwater GPS and there is a physical working model. The problem is last year it got pulled under DARPA and closed in for national security interests. But the horse was already out of the barn before they tried to close the door. Some of us are trying to hop on board the project because "it works". They are trying to work noise filters, but they definitely have direction angle, distance and your location achieved underwater without any surface device/connection. In rough terms because I don't want to tip it off, the earth's outer crust makes "reverberations" and we know exactly where those occur. Years away from a diver unit, but DARPA is not going to let this go public anytime soon. Nothing more from me.
 
Not a whole lot of room for tanks, but pretty awesome none the less.

Require steels, the tank bank is down in the keel. Dual purpose.
 
Require steels, the tank bank is down in the keel. Dual purpose.

I'm sold...great idea!

I suspect with a ship like that you could pretty much call it from anywhere in the world. Pretty cool stuff on the horizon.
 
Handheld marine VHF radios with DSC function are commonly available for a few hundred dollars. Most are capable of sending a call message to a pre-programmed MMSI number. That DSC message would call the boat & give your GPS location. Any boat with a modern chartplotter that has a GPS receiver connected to it could then just press go-to & the gizmo would point them to the diver. I have seen divers carry a radio or cell phone in a waterproof container that is attached to their dive flag float.

The VHF would also allow you to chat with the boat. You could say: hey, hurry up, there is a shark after my fish bag, or take it easy, I'm still waiting for team 2 to finish their safety stop.

The hardware exists, & is not even hard to find.
 
The non-trivial issue with autonomous boats is running over divers (and low radar signature kayaks, canoes etc). From what I've read, the Navy autonomous boats do not operate in congested areas without a tender acting as lookout.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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