With no humans on board, the ship relies on artificial intelligence to make decisions and search for potential obstacles in the water.
Built to recreate the original historic Mayflower's journey from England to the New World more than 400 years ago, the MAS, which carried 102 passengers known as Pilgrims, took 10 weeks to reach its destination in the fall of 1620.
The MAS was built in partnership with the University of Plymouth, MSubs, technology company IBM and the public charity Promare, which promotes marine research and exploration worldwide.
The MAS research vessel will collect "critical" data about the ocean, such as whale numbers, using its microphones, and take water samples for plastic traces.
The ship relies on an AI captain on board, who has his own Twitter account. The AI Captain uses computer vision, automation software and Watson technology - IBM's artificial intelligence platform, and has been trained with more than a million marine images so that it can recognize on ships, wrecks, bridges, plots, and other hazards to the ship.
In his first tweet, the artificial intelligence captain tweeted, on Thursday, saying: "We have sailed on our way to the United States!"
