The technology required to produce autonomous commercial ships is close to being available. When such developments are combined with e-navigation, improved maritime connectivity and the increasing reluctance of people to spend time at sea, they make the advent of the unmanned ship look inevitable.
The unmanned ship could enable maritime transport to meet today’s and tomorrow’s competitiveness, safety and sustainability challenges.
But why haven’t unmanned ships set sail yet? For this to happen, investment and industry support are still needed, as well as a framework to ensure that autonomous systems can operate safely and reliably.
In an attempt to drive the technology forward, some organisations have recently begun developing concepts for unmanned ships. They include Rolls-Royce and the European Commission-sponsored project Maritime Unmanned Navigation through Intelligence in Networks (MUNIN). Their work is being supported by lively discussion in the industry.
“Autonomous shipping is the future of the maritime industry. As disruptive as the smartphone, the smart ship will revolutionise the landscape of ship design and operations,” says Mikael Makinen, Rolls-Royce’s president of marine.
For this reason, the company has been leading a €6.6 million project called the Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications Initiative (AAWAI), which will bring together academics, ship designers, equipment manufacturers and classification bodies to explore the social, legal, regulatory and technological factors to be considered before autonomous ships can set sail.
The project will run until the end of 2017 and will combine expertise from several universities in Finland, including Tampere University of Technology; VTT Technical Research Centre; Åbo Akademi University; Aalto University; the University of Turku; and leading maritime companies and organisations including Rolls-Royce, NAPA, Deltamarin, DNV GL and Inmarsat.
Making waves
The technology could transform the industry, according to Jonne Poikonen, senior research fellow at the Technology Research Centre at the University of Turku, who is leading the project’s technology research. “Remote and autonomous ships have the potential to redefine the maritime industry and the roles of the players in it, with implications for shipping companies, shipbuilders and maritime systems providers, as well as technology companies from other sectors, especially automotive,” he says.
Virtual captain
However, there are still issues to tackle, he adds. “The technologies needed to make remote and autonomous ships a reality exist – the sensor technology needed is sound and commercially available, and the algorithms needed for robust decision support systems – the vessel’s ‘virtual captain’ – are not far away. The challenge is to find the optimum way to combine them cost-effectively in a marine environment.” The AAWAI research will also focus on safety and sustainability.
Another research project that is pushing unmanned shipping forwards is MUNIN. The project was set up to develop and verify a concept for an autonomous ship, is led by the Fraunhofer Centre for Maritime Logistics and Services in Hamburg, Germany.
One factor that stands in the way of unmanned ships is ensuring the reliability of both the hardware and the software systems, says Wilko Bruhn, research associate at Fraunhofer. “As with every automation system, extensive tests need to be carried out in simulation and in-situ environments. In the case of an autonomously navigating ship, a system failure might potentially pose a greater hazard than in a conventionally navigated ship. For this reason, fail-safe procedures need to be installed.”
Most deaths and injuries at sea happen on the afflicted person’s own ship, and a significant proportion of accidents are caused by human error. Working at sea is around 10 times more dangerous than working in European land-based industry, and accidents could be significantly reduced by removing people from the ship – or at least from the most dangerous operations, he says.
“One recurring factor in maritime incident investigation is fatigue of the bridge crew, due to a lack of situational awareness, which leads to misinterpretations and eventually to disaster. However, in unmanned ships, computer systems are insusceptible to this phenomenon. The sensors will make sure that no object will go by unnoticed, and the navigation system will always act according to the rules and maintain a safe distance to other objects.”
Other factors that have a significant impact on the ship’s safety include the exact design of the ship, its components and the trade in which it is engaged. MUNIN’s simulation has been using a bulk carrier, operating autonomously on the deep-sea legs of an intercontinental route. “Here, safety benefits are expected. The two main hazards in deep-sea navigation are foundering due to severe weather and ship-to-ship collisions. The autonomous ship will consistently evade undesirable weather conditions, and is equipped with a system designed to identify the course and speed combination, which maintains stresses below a safe threshold when navigating in a storm,” says Bruhn.
Despite the ship being unmanned in terms of crew, all the navigation processes for planning of a voyage will involve people. MUNIN has developed a shore control centre to supervise the autonomous ship. According to the researchers, “in conducting a voyage, the shore control centre operator will set threshold values inside which the autonomous navigation system must operate, and thus define the degree of freedom for the system. For this reason, the degree to which the human will be involved in the navigation process is defined by the human, and is likely to change on different legs of a voyage.”
This ‘operational envelope’ will limit the effectiveness of the autonomous systems, but the group perceives keeping the person in the loop as a good compromise between safety and efficiency. At the point when the onboard control team embarks, control will be executed by the team with support from the shore control centre and by the autonomous navigation system technology. So in densely trafficked and coastal waters, the human element will play a much larger role than on the open sea.
Secure communication
For the remote supervision from the shore control centre, MUNIN needs qualified personnel who can interpret the data received from the ship via satellite connection. “Interaction must be assured to allow for intervention,” says Bruhn. “Robust, two-way connections between the shore control centre and the ship are essential.”
Another researcher who agrees that unmanned ships do not mean removing human beings entirely from the picture, is Eija Kaasinen, principal scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre, who is involved with the Rolls-Royce unmanned ships project. “Unmanned ships need to be monitored and controlled, and this will require new kinds of work roles, tasks, tools and environments. The future shore control centre concept has been designed by emphasising the user experience. By focusing on the operators’ point of view, it is possible to introduce meaningful, pleasurable and engaging roles for the shore control centre professionals.”
The question of how much human interaction is preferable, and where this human element will be placed, is a difficult one to answer. Bruhn says: “This is mainly because the sea is a tough working environment for the sensitive hardware that is required. If one component onboard breaks down, the shore-based operator will be able to monitor the ship more closely and prevent a worsening of the situation.”
So a ‘fire-and-forget’ concept is not perceived as sustainable in any way, the group believes. “When autonomous shipping is introduced, the consortium partners expect this to be a gradual change. Similar to the development of driver assistant systems in cars, such systems will also be introduced in ship navigation,” says Bruhn.
Another safety aspect applying to the introduction of unmanned ships relates to the expectation that they will be navigated alongside conventional vessels. For this reason, they need to comply with the same rules, and be designed so that they are as similar to conventional ships as possible. “This will simplify the introduction, interaction with conventional ships, and with vessel traffic services centres,” says Bruhn. Unlike a human navigator, the autonomous software will always follow the rules of the sea closely and is unable to decide otherwise. For this reason, safety benefits are expected.
Another issue is maritime legislation, which is seen as a significant barrier. Current legislation requires that a ‘proper look-out’ be maintained on the bridge at all times ‘by sight and hearing’. This requirement might be interpreted to imply that a human must fulfil this function –representing a major hurdle for the introduction of further automation on the bridge. However, 67% of those questioned in a survey by MUNIN believe that legislation will be adopted in future to take into consideration the specific circumstances that autonomous ships bring.
To secure regulatory approval and the support of ship owners, operators and seafarers as well as wider public acceptance, the operation of remote and autonomous ships will need to become at least as safe as that of existing vessels. In addition, the industry will need to learn more about the risks of the new technology, says Risto Jalonen, senior research scientist at Aalto University, who is leading the Rolls-Royce project’s safety strand. “The industry has experience of systematic and comprehensive risk assessments. However, when a new or emerging technology is involved, a wider and deeper understanding of a new and changed risk portfolio – with a variety of known and unknown hazards – is needed.”
Establishing appropriate rules is vital to the development of remote and autonomous ships, according to the project’s legal strand leader, Dr Henrik Ringbom, adjunct professor at Åbo Akademi University. “For remote and autonomous shipping to become a reality, we need efforts at all regulatory levels. The legal challenges of constructing and operating a demonstration vessel need to be explored, while considering rule changes at the International Maritime Organisation. Legislation can be changed if there is the political will.”
Liability issues
Questions of liability for autonomous ships are subject to national variations, but it seems that there is a less urgent need for regulatory change in this field. “What also needs to be explored is to what extent other liability rules, such as product liability, would affect traditional rules of maritime liability and insurance,” says Ringbom.
The autonomous ship is still at an early stage of development and there are many unanswered questions. Continued research seems necessary, but such vessels may be introduced sooner than we think, according to Oskar Levander, Rolls-Royce vice-president of innovation. “This is happening. It’s not if – it’s when. The work by Rolls-Royce supports the development of remote-controlled and autonomous vessels and will enable proof-of-concept demonstration. We will see a remote-controlled ship in use by the end of the decade.”