The Incredible Autonomous Ships Of The Future: Run By Artificial Intelligence Rather Than A Crew
There has been a lot of discussion about autonomous vehicles on the land and in the air, but what about on the sea? While the world got the first glimpse of afully autonomous ferry thanks to the collaboration between Rolls-Royce and Finferries, the state-owned ferry operator of Finland, there’s still quite a bit of work to be done before we can expect the world’s waterways to be overtaken with autonomous vessels.
Even though we might be years or even decades away from the majority of vessels becoming autonomous, there are certainly artificial intelligence algorithms at work today. A fully autonomous ship would be considered a vessel that can operate on its own without a crew. Remote ships are those that are operated by a human from shore, and an automated ship runs software that manages its movements. As the technology matures, more types of ships will likely transition from being manned to having some autonomous capabilities. Autonomous ships might be used for some applications, but it’s quite possible that there will still be crew onboard some ships even if all hurdles to acquiring a fully autonomous fleet are crossed.
As we saw with the Finnish ferry, thefirst autonomous ships will be deployed on simple inland or coastal liner applications where waters are calm, the route is simple, and there isn’t much traffic.
There’s also an inland electric container ship, Yara Birkeland, under construction that is expected to be completed in 2020 and fully autonomous by 2022. Some companies are building fully autonomous ships from scratch, while other start-ups are developing semi-autonomous systems to be used on existing vessels. WhenRolls-Royce sold its autonomous maritime division to Kongsberg, it gave the Norwegian company a boost in its goal of being a leader in the autonomous shipping industry. Samsung is another company that uses machine learning, augmented reality, analytics, and more to create a smart shipping platform through its Samsung Heavy Industries division.
Existing cargo ships have the chance to get retrofitted with autonomous technologies thanks to the efforts of start-ups such as San Francisco-basedShone. Shone’s technology helps crews with piloting assistance and to detect and predict the movement of other vessels in the waterway.
Just as artificial intelligence and autonomy promise in other applications, it is expected that autonomous ships can improve safety, increase efficiency, and relieve humans from unsafe and repetitive tasks.
According to a study by Allianz, between75% and 96% of maritime accidents are caused by human error. If autonomous and semi-autonomous systems can help reduce the reliance on humans that can make mistakes due to fatigue or bad judgment, autonomous ships could eventually make our oceans safer.
