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Rolls Royce Developing Drone Cargo Ships
kc123 writes in with news that Rolls Royce is designing unmanned cargo ships."Rolls-Royce's Blue Ocean development team has set up a virtual-reality prototype at its office in Alesund, Norway, that simulates 360-degree views from a vessel's bridge. Eventually, the London-based manufacturer of engines and turbines says, captains on dry land will use similar control centers to command hundreds of crewless ships. Drone ships would be safer, cheaper and less polluting for the $375 billion shipping industry that carries 90 percent of world trade, Rolls-Royce says."
I don't even know where to begin. The ocean is a harsh environment and ships work hard and maintenance and upkeep is a constant chore day in and day out both in port and while underway. The engineering crew is basically the travelling maintenance department. If the ship doesn't carry a crew, it will have to come out of service for maintenance and repairs, which means not only is it not making money, it's tying up an expensive berth in port. If it does break down while underway, how is anybody going to get to it? It could take days.
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The article is mainly about using telepresence and computers to pilot a ship. But other than piloting, what else do humans do, and how automatable is it?
For example, how often do people have to repair ships while under way? During a storm, do people ever have to run around fixing chains that are working loose, or fix a leaking seal and set up pumps to pump out a flooded compartment?
I don't know the answers to the above questions, by the way. I don't know much about cargo ships.
Even if we still need humans for some tasks on a cargo ship, perhaps not too far in the future, we might have telepresence robots that can do the tasks.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Hmmm, let's see. Several tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars of floating kit, carrying possibly just as much value in cargo, int he middle of nowhere, with no-one in sight, just a video camera. Hmmm.
Will the pirates at least wave and say thank you to the crew when they take manual control of the ship? How about just looting a few cargo containers as it's travelling along?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
If someone boards an unmanned drone ship, wouldn't they be able to claim the ship as salvage and sell the contents?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
It's awesome to know that nothing will ever go wrong in five minutes.
Altho, it's amazing that all captains who had at least five minutes to respond to everything ever lost a ship.
It's going to be awesome to have the best new captains who can respond to everything with five minute breaks during their shift! Thank you for your insight! You are exactly what I expect from anon cowards! I bow to your creativity!
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Drone ships would have very little benefit compared to ships of today, and would save very little labor. That's because crew sizes are already negligible on modern ships. Ships require very little labor for their operation. For example, a massive containership like the Maersk Triple-E might carry 15,000 containers (equivalent to about 7,000 tractor-trailer truckloads) while having a crew of 15, in three shifts. At any one time, there are 5 people transporting 7,000 tractor-trailer truckloads of cargo. If we reduced those jobs, it would make very little difference to costs or anything else.
Bear in mind that three of the 15 positions are the engineering staff who are frequently performing physical operations on a massive engine. Those jobs will not go away by having a single captain for multiple ships.
The number of jobs on a ship is decreasing every year anyway, as ships gradually grow larger. Larger ships generally do not have larger crews, so the amount of labor per unit of cargo keeps dropping anyway. Large containerships today carry more than twice the cargo of ships from 20 years ago, while crew sizes have not grown, so the amount of labor per unit of cargo has dropped by half and continues dropping.
Labor costs are already an extremely small fraction of the costs of operating a ship. It would make little difference to reduce labor costs further.
And yet, the outcome is still better than it is now, where they hijack the ship and hold the crew ransom. Here, they hijack the ship, and.. that's it. There's no crew to hold for ransom, no one to talk to for instant quick payment, etc. You save human lives.
The only way to make money is for the pirates to go and sell the contents of the containers, which requires a lot more time, effort and money and takes a lot of time. Holding a crew hostage could easily get $10M+ in a week. Making money selling what's in the containers takes far longer.
in containers that aren't labelled, stacked 5 high and 10 wide [or more], where you would have to move most containers to be able to actually open them to see inside, nevermind the whole "in the middle of the ocean without a road in sight" thing.
and while it could be fairly easy to disable remote control of the ship [by physically destroying/disconnecting the antenae/satellite dish], and they can kill the engine, it may not be that easy to get control of the ship to get it to shore in a reasonable [for the pirate] way.
maybe it will become a 'give us money or we'll sink it' thing?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
You really hate washing machines and tractors too? How much human work is lost because of machines?
Some ... for now. What happens when all of the ~4,000,000 truck drivers in the US are out of a job due to automation. Oh, they'll go to work fixing robots.Mmm hmm. As someone who has been doing controls systems engineering for the last 10 years, I can tell you that these systems are getting better all of the time. I used to get calls at night and on weekends a lot. Now, very few calls. The hardware and software tools and upgrades make it so that the system is very robust. Now, very few calls.
And those truck drivers? Well, I can tell you that the electrical technician's (we have about the same amount as we did 10 years ago) workload has also decreased. Motor brushes are going away. Bearings are becoming sealed, or automated grease systems installed. Breakers: now know when they are able to trip the load, they can isolate the load to the least affected area, and they can minimize the damage because they are so fast. Things last longer because of materials engineering and computer modelling. These guys just don't have that much to do anymore (Kaizen boards, and PRTs notwithstanding, that shit is just make-work).
And really, have you met many truck drivers? Some are very intelligent, but the vast majority have a boring mindless job for a reason.
Take automated cars for instance: Taxicab drivers out of a job. But not only that. Maybe I and my neighbors sign up for a service where a self driving car is called up and arrives where you are in a matter of minutes. I'm not going to buy another car, that's just a waste of money. Also, less cars on the road because they are operating all of the time. Think about how much time your car just sits there. (There's a job at Ford that I've contemplated applying for, but this gives me pause.) And then, less accidents. Bye bye insurance middleman. Bye bye auto body repair guy.Oh yeah, don't forget to apply for a job fixing robots. Bye bye garages. I'm sure our houses will just become bigger.
I could keep typing along these lines, but maybe you could put your mind to this line of reasoning and come up with many more examples. Seriously, the near term future is vastly different than what we've been experiencing. But in the long term, that's a good thing. And the long term future is radically different.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
And no control over the contents that specific ship may have, or whether they can find a market for the booty...I don't buy it either.
I was under the impression that the whole point of the piracy was the payoff on the hostages, and really had nothing to do with the ship's cargo. (generalization, not 100% accurate)
And no control over the ship either. The remote crew could just sail it to the nearest friendly warship.
The ultimate failsafe if remote control was impossible and communication was disabled would be to trip a few circuits deep in the ship, jam the rudder and drop anchors. Good luck towing that. Basically it could be made really unpleasant and futile to hijack these ships. But it could make for some amusing news headlines.
And no control over the contents that specific ship may have, or whether they can find a market for the booty...I don't buy it either.
I was under the impression that the whole point of the piracy was the payoff on the hostages, and really had nothing to do with the ship's cargo. (generalization, not 100% accurate)
And no control over the ship either. The remote crew could just sail it to the nearest friendly warship.
Also no need for the ship to look like a regular ship to start with. No need for fixed railings or entrance ways at sea-level - good luck grappling to that.