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."

Comments

Re:until someone hacks it

[Cryacin]

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?

Laws would have to be changed

[the_Bionic_lemming]

If someone boards an unmanned drone ship, wouldn't they be able to claim the ship as salvage and sell the contents?

Re:Very little benefit

[floobedy]

I should also point out that the statistics mentioned in the article are incorrect. From the article:

Crew costs of $3,299 a day account for about 44 percent of total operating expenses for a large container ship, according to Moore Stephens LLP, an industry accountant and consultant.

A modern containership can cost $200 million, and can consume 300 tons of bunker fuel per day. Thus, the fuel costs are over $100,000 per day, and the costs of the purchase of the ship are over $50,000 per day.

Thus, crew costs are more like 2% of all costs, and not 44% as the quotation indicates.

The only way to arrive at the 44% figure is if you break down containership costs into capital costs (the cost of the ship), bunker costs (fuel), and operating costs (not including fuel). This kind of breakdown is commonly done. If you break things down in this way, "operating costs" are generally about 10% of the total cost of running the ship, and labor costs would be 44% of that ~10%. Thus, labor costs altogether are a few percent of the cost of running a ship.

The article does not spell this out, and gives a mistaken impression.

Re:What do the humans actually do on a ship?

[angularbanjo]

I remember reading about a plane where there was a crawspace so you could do maintenance

No, that's where they put the snakes.

Re:until someone hacks it

[Electricity Likes Me]

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.