The race to build a robot ship is picking up steam

OK article I suppose. Kind of light on any assesment of regulatory body hurdles (Coast Gaurd, IMO, etc).

This sentance bugs me though: "...shipping companies may replace their giant cargo vessels with fleets of smaller, more fuel-efficient boats."

This statement makes no sense. Larger ships, in a general, achieve greater economies of scale and therefore, all other things being equal, a larger ship will be more fuel efficient per unit cargo. Period.

The current front-runner is ASV Global, an Anglo-American firm based in Broussard, Louisiana and Portsmouth, UK. https://www.asvglobal.com/