British luxury car and aero-engine manufacturing company Rolls-Royce revealed its plans to make remote and autonomous cargo vessels in the near term.
During the Autonomous Ship Technology Symposium 2016 in Amsterdam, Rolls-Royce outlined the company's strategy of using remote-controlled and autonomous cargo vessels. Rolls-Royce is working on virtual decks where crew based on land can control all aspects of a ship. The crew will have VR camera views and monitoring drones to find issues that humans may not find.
"This is happening. It's not if, it's when. The technologies needed to make remote and autonomous ships a reality exist," says Oskar Levander, the VP of Innovation at Rolls-Royce.
Rolls-Royce's Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications Initiative (AAWA) is managing the project. Levander added that the AAWA project is testing sensor arrays in a number of climatic and operating conditions in Finland. The VP at Rolls-Royce also suggests that the industry should see an autonomous ship by 2020.
The technology that Rolls-Royce is developing will help the company to deliver complex enhancements in vessel performance as well as operation. The short-term objective of the project is to support customers to automate navigation and operations, which will allow crew to concentrate on other valuable tasks.
"The increased level of safety onboard will be provided by additional systems. Our future solutions will reduce need for human-machine interaction by automating selected tasks and processes, whilst keeping the human at the centre of critical decision making and onboard expertise. In the longer term, our efforts in remote and autonomous operations will pave the way to autonomous ships," says Rolls-Royce.
Vessels need a large amount of human resources to perform a wide range of on-board tasks. Rolls-Royce's initiative toward crew-free ships has great potential and advantages. Quarters for humans on a vessel can occupy a lot of space. No crew means that the space can be used for more cargo.
Computer systems will take over many tasks, which may cut down on human errors resulting in more efficiency and safety. A team of ground-based crew may manage a number of vessels on the seas simultaneously. However, autonomous vessels will also result in job cuts for humans who work on the ships.
Although Roll-Royce has confident plans of producing remote control and autonomous ships, the company may face navigation regulatory hurdles and careful scrutiny of the security and safety implications of such ships.
Rolls-Royce will also have to address the issue of hackers attacking the computer systems that control autonomous ships. It remains to be seen how swiftly Rolls-Royce is able to bring an autonomous ship to the market.
Photo: Paul Hudson | Flickr
