One Sea coordinator DIMECC and the European Space Agency (ESA) signed a Memorandum of Intent, aiming to bring together leading exponents of autonomous ship technology. The agreement aspires to encourage the development of space-based applications to analyse, enable and deploy maritime digitalisation and autonomy using latest generation connectivity.
The agreement regards the use of resources, expertise and facilities belonging to one of the signatories to achieve common goals. It also makes explicit reference to the future use of DIMECC’s Jaakonmeri test area for autonomous vessels, which is the first dedicated test zone worldwide for autonomous ship technology, located off western Finland. In fact, Finnish regulators have authorized One Sea to oversee future trials in the area.
This is an important statement of intent, through which One Sea and the ESA acknowledge the significance that ongoing digitalisation and autonomy have for the maritime industries. Expertise from different disciplines is necessary to transform today’s connectivity capabilities for tomorrow’s needs, and this MoI represents a unique opportunity to develop applications and services that leverage assets on the ground and in space
said Jukka Merenluoto, One Sea Lead.
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The One Sea alliance gathers stakeholders from the maritime and ICT industries to boost the delivery of digitalised solutions to market. It does this under the guidance of DIMECC (Digital, Internet, Materials & Engineering Co-Creation), which has been created to support strategic research, development and innovation.
ESA’s participation aligns with the space agency’s Advanced Research in Telecommunication Systems (ARTES) Business Applications programme, which has as a goal to support European players in providing commercial products and services that benefit user communities across a number of vertical domains.
We expect that the current initiative, thanks to the engagement of the partners, will foster the emergence of innovative space-based downstream solutions addressing the key challenges of the future maritime and shipping sector
explained Rita Rinaldo, Head of the ESA Institutional Projects Section.
Finally, One Sea members ABB, Kongsberg Maritime and Wärtsilä conducted separate autonomous ship trials off the Finnish and Norwegian coasts at the end of 2018. Last month, three new members joined the One Sea alliance. Namely, Inmarsat and NYK Group research subsidiary MTI (Monohakobi Technology Institute) became full members and the Royal Institution of Naval Architects (RINA) signed up as an associate member.
