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Shipping to see a shift to automation, ahead of unmanned vessels

Shipping to see a shift to automation, ahead of unmanned vessels
The vision of unmanned ships traversing the world’s oceans are long way off but a shift towards systems such as autopilot is expected to be seen in the coming years according senior executives.

The unmanned or autonomous ship has received a lot of attention in recent times, but there are many hurdles still to be overcome. “Many steps will be needed before fully unmanned ships can become a reality, however some sort of autonomy is also relevant and would greatly improve safety through smart position support,” Remi Eriksen president and ceo of DNV GL told the Danish Maritime Technology conference in Copenhagen.

“In order to increase this autonomy situational awareness needs to be dramatically improved.

Initially Eriksen believes it will be a support feature with a move an autopilot type feature as is seen on aircraft.

“This will not happen on the deepseas in the immediate future, this will happen in national waters and inland waters where voyages are typically point-to-point. Initially vessels would be manned, shifting to observers who would intervene with the autopilot if necessary.

“Then of course international law and regulations will follow over time, but I think it will be quite some time before we see this happening for deepsea shipping.

A similar scenario was presented by Stefan Matias Nygard, general manager portfolio management for Wartsila. “We have to take small steps and make things more automated as that is the way things are going.”

He said he expected the process to be like it was for autopilot when it first introduced for aircraft where it would have been trialed for 15 minutes initially mid-flight, then 20 minutes on so on. “Now they use it so much pilots have to spend time in simulators to get the flying hours.”

It will also take time for regulations to catch-up. Nygard said that Wartsila has the technology to produce an unmanned engine room today. However, while the technology exists there are issues on the legal side in terms of making it happen.