Tag: autonomous ships

Norsafe informed that it has been working with Kongsberg to develop an Unmanned Surface Vessel to act as a combined autonomous and data collection platform with different sensors. The USV has been designed for simple transportation either by road trailer or containerised on deck.

Rolls-Royce has revealed plans for an autonomous, single role, naval vessel with a range of 3500 nautical miles. The 60m long vessel is designed to perform a range of single role missions, for example, patrol & surveillance, mine detection or fleet screening.

Maritime activity over the next decade will be dominated by unmanned surface and underwater vessels, according to a report on the future of autonomous maritime systems launched by Lloyd’s Register, QinetiQ and the University of Southampton.

Speaking at a European maritime conference, European Commissioner Violeta Bulc unveiled EU's plan on autonomous shipping, stressing that new technologies are slowly reshaping the entire maritime sector, with the marine industry already investing heavily on innovation.

As vessels become more and more autonomous, consideration has to be given to the human element of future vessel operations, according to David Patraiko FNI, Director of Projects at The Nautical Institute.

Kongsberg has signed a Research & Innovation contract with PILOT-E for the development of zero emission, full-electric, autonomous ferry concepts. The vision for the PILOT-E concept is to develop a ferry as an integrated, zero emission aspect of a total national transportation plan.

Wärtsilä, in collaboration with Gulfmark Offshore, has realized testing of remote control of ship operations, on August 21, off the North Sea coast of Scotland. The testing involved driving the vessel through a sequence of manoeuvres using a combination of Dynamic Positioning and manual joystick control.

Aiming to expand its research on autonomous shipping, Japanese Nippon Yusen Kaisha has set plans to test a remote-controlled container ship across the Pacific Ocean in 2019. The plan comes after the fatal collision of US warship John McCain with a merchant tanker on 21 August, off Singapore.

With human error behind 75 percent of marine liability losses, there are hopes that autonomous vessels can improve shipping safety. In view of this, Allianz insurance discusses some of the potential implications of a crewless life on the open waves.