Seatrade Maritime is part of the Informa Markets Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Kongsberg team to develop ‘world’s first autonomous, zero emission’ feeder

Kongsberg team to develop ‘world’s first autonomous, zero emission’ feeder
Norway’s Kongsberg Group has entered into a partnership with global fertilizer company YARA to build what is claimed will be the world’s first fully electric container feeder.

Kongsberg will be responsible for development and delivery of all key enabling technologies, for the vessel’s remote and autonomous operations, including sensors and integration required, in addition to the electric drive, battery and propulsion control systems.

 In a separate, similarly innovative move Kongsberg recently launched Kognifai, a technology platform analogous to Apple’s app store but designed to offer benefits of cloud computing to shipping, offshore, and the wind and power generation segments.

“The platform is not a product. The applications, solutions on top of the platform – they are the product,” said Kongsberg chief technology officer Christian Møller. “The elasticity of the cloud means computing power on demand. You could be on your laptop, your phone, it doesn’t matter. All you need is a device, and a browser.”

One of the benefits of cloud computing’s power coupled with Kongsberg’s advanced simulation techniques will be the ability to create a "digital twin" of an actual vessel, Møller added. This will allow machine learning to be carried out safely in a “fully synthetic environment” where you can simulate something going wrong aboard a ship and find out how the incident will escalate under different courses of action, he says, and “know exactly what needs to be done”.