Are autonomous ships the future?

Accord­ing to Rolls-Royce Marine, by 2030 autonomous ships will be a com­mon sight on the oceans. Last month the firm teamed up with Mit­sui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) in a demon­stra­tion test on a fer­ry serv­ing Japan’s Seto Inland Sea route equipped with its intel­li­gence aware­ness sys­tem.

“Sun­flower fer­ry oper­ates in some of the most con­gest­ed waters in the world and will pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to test rig­or­ous­ly Rolls-Royce’s intel­li­gent aware­ness sys­tem,” says MOL direc­tor Ken­ta Arai. “This can give our crews an enhanced deci­sion sup­port tool, increas­ing their safe­ty and that of our ves­sels.”

This encap­su­lates the state of autonomous ship­ping at present, as there are para­mount con­cerns about safe­ty, and rig­or­ous test­ing to ensure deci­sion-mak­ing can be suf­fi­cient­ly robust to ensure con­for­mi­ty with the law and reg­u­la­tions of the sea.

Autonomous ships not quite on the horizon yet 

How­ev­er, Maer­sk chief exec­u­tive Søren Skou has cast doubt on just how far and how fast mat­ters will progress. Mr Skou does not see much advan­tage in tak­ing the last few peo­ple off the ves­sel, even if com­mer­cial rea­sons and the tech­nol­o­gy sug­gest­ed oth­er­wise.

“I don’t expect we will be allowed to sail around with 400-metre-long con­tain­er ships weigh­ing 200,000 tonnes with­out any human beings on board,” he says. “I don’t think it will be a dri­ver of effi­cien­cy, not in my time.”

In the short term, we are like­ly to see auto­mat­ed tech­nolo­gies and reduced crew on board for some manoeu­vres, par­tic­u­lar­ly short dis­tances, and the desire to inno­vate will con­tin­ue apace.

Iiro Lind­borg, Rolls-Royce gen­er­al man­ag­er of remote and autonomous oper­a­tions, says: “The intel­li­gence aware­ness sys­tem forms part of our ongo­ing devel­op­ment of autonomous ships, but we decid­ed to make the tech­nol­o­gy avail­able today as it offers real ben­e­fits to the exist­ing ship­ping envi­ron­ment. It is undoubt­ed­ly one of the most sig­nif­i­cant advances made to date in terms of ship nav­i­ga­tion safe­ty. It pro­vides bridge per­son­nel with a much greater under­stand­ing of the ship’s sur­round­ings.”

Rolls-Royce’s autodock­ing sys­tem auto­mates the first and last phas­es of cross­ings, with var­i­ous sen­sors that assess prox­im­i­ty to har­bour struc­tures

The pros and cons of autonomous shipping technology 

Get it right and there are cer­tain­ly ben­e­fits ahead for the indus­try. Iso­lat­ed islands could be served, inhos­pitable routes nav­i­gat­ed and remote areas accessed, much of it with dimin­ished risk to sea­far­ers.

As 80 per cent of acci­dents are human error, autonomous ships offer safer solu­tions than crewed ships. How­ev­er, risk in ship­ping will remain; it’s just that the risk of human error is trans­ferred onshore to a remote con­trol cen­tre. Also, with oppor­tu­ni­ty comes fear, as the indus­try wor­ries about autonomous ship­ping lead­ing to new forms of pira­cy.

Autonomous ship­ping projects began in 2015, with the advanced autonomous water­borne appli­ca­tions project, backed by the Finnish gov­ern­ment, involv­ing key play­ers includ­ing Rolls-Royce and Finn­Fer­ries.

In the same year, a Euro­pean Union-spon­sored research project, mar­itime unmanned nav­i­ga­tion through intel­li­gence in net­works, was com­plet­ed. Oth­er projects and research have ensued in Nor­way, the UK and Chi­na.

Last year, YARA and Kongs­berg entered into a part­ner­ship to build the world’s first ful­ly elec­tric and autonomous con­tain­er ves­sel, the YARA Birke­land. It is sched­uled to switch to remote oper­a­tion in 2019 and start per­form­ing ful­ly autonomous oper­a­tions from 2020 when it will sail between the ports of Pors­grunn, Bre­vik and Larvik.

Regulation around autonomous ships may give Scandinavia an edge

Scan­danavia may be the place where reg­u­la­tion of autonomous ship­ping will emerge first, accord­ing to Pro­fes­sor Masamichi Hasebe, senior legal coun­sel at the Japan Asso­ci­a­tion of Marine Safe­ty. He says: “Den­mark, Nor­way and Fin­land can change domes­tic reg­u­la­tion with­out wait­ing for inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tion. They can adopt by them­selves. Also, like-mind­ed coun­tries such as Sin­ga­pore and Chi­na may take the same approach.”

Exist­ing inter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions, includ­ing Safe­ty of Life at Sea, Con­ven­tion on the Inter­na­tion­al Rules for Pre­vent­ing Col­li­sions at Sea, Pre­ven­tion of Pol­lu­tion from Ships, and Stan­dards of Train­ing, Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and Watch­keep­ing for Sea­far­ers, were draft­ed on the assump­tion there is a crew on board.

Stephan Piaz­za, KPMG man­ag­er of ship­ping and yacht­ing in Mal­ta, says: “We want to get ahead of the game, but also we need to be sure cer­tain pro­vi­sions are self-adapt­ing to future chal­lenges.

“When it comes to ships and nav­i­ga­tion, you must keep in mind that the law­mak­er often ranks the pro­tec­tion of sea­far­ers and the sea envi­ron­ment at the top of its pri­or­i­ties, ahead of such strict­ly nav­i­ga­tion­al or com­mer­cial aspects, which also arise from the use of autonomous ships. It will be inter­est­ing to see how these two dif­fer­ing inter­ests can and should coex­ist with each oth­er.”

Laying foundations for the future

The Inter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Orga­ni­za­tion (IMO) has agreed on a def­i­n­i­tion of mar­itime autonomous sur­face ships (MASS), as well as a frame­work for analysing the applic­a­ble IMO reg­u­la­tions. The IMO’s Mar­itime Safe­ty Com­mit­tee (MSC) has kicked off what will be years of reg­u­la­to­ry and legal work by issu­ing a scop­ing exer­cise to deter­mine the extent of the need to amend the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work to enable the safe, secure and envi­ron­men­tal oper­a­tion of MASS with­in the exist­ing IMO instru­ments.

I don’t expect we will be allowed to sail around with 400-metre-long con­tain­er ships weigh­ing 200,000 tonnes with­out any human beings on board — Søren Skou, Chief exec­u­tive Maer­sk

Speak­ing at an MSC meet­ing, IMO sec­re­tary gen­er­al Kitack Lim said there needs to be a bal­ance between new tech­nolo­gies, the effi­cien­cy of ship­ping, and “keep­ing in mind the role of the human ele­ment and the need to main­tain safe nav­i­ga­tion, fur­ther reduc­ing the num­ber of marine casu­al­ties and inci­dents”. The Comité Mar­itime Inter­na­tion­al is also con­sid­er­ing this issue through an inter­na­tion­al work­ing group, analysing how inter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions and reg­u­la­tions can adapt them­selves to autonomous ships.

Though Dr Piaz­za believes the IMO scop­ing should focus more on cyber­se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, as he explains: “The role of the IMO is that of cre­at­ing uni­for­mi­ty, and uni­for­mi­ty is essen­tial in ship­ping, so per­haps Scan­di­navia could become a mod­el that is tried, test­ed and export­ed. Why not? Prob­a­bly it is the best option. The IMO can move slow­ly for var­i­ous rea­sons.”

Success of autonomous cars will determine future for shipping

Pro­fes­sor Hasebe says: “The IMO scop­ing exer­cise will go to the end of 2020, then actu­al prac­ti­cal draft­ing dis­cus­sion will start and there is also a need to amend a num­ber of con­ven­tions. Some could be straight­for­ward­ly amend­ed, with­in two or three years, but more con­tro­ver­sial ones could take longer, by which I mean the more polit­i­cal amend­ments address­ing sea­far­ers, for instance. We can­not expect to see all these changes with­in ten years.”

He believes ship­ping won’t take the lead because there is not yet enough inter­est in autonomous ships and nav­i­ga­tion. How­ev­er, he says: “If they can see the ben­e­fit on land, they will see the ben­e­fits of autonomous ship­ping. Solu­tions to autonomous dri­ving on land can per­haps be achieved quick­er, though they are more com­plex than sea, so if peo­ple can see the ben­e­fit of land solu­tions [with autonomous cars] then there will be a lot of pres­sure to achieve this on the sea.”

KPMG’s Dr Piaz­za con­cludes: “There’s a lot of work to be done and it will take 20 to 25 years, but it is good these tests have begun and dis­cus­sions have moved for­ward: it is pos­i­tive.” Law and reg­u­la­tion com­mon­ly lag behind, but there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty that with autonomous ship­ping, law­mak­ers may for once man­age to keep pace with, if not get ahead of, inno­va­tion.