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Rolls-Royce Eyes Autonomous Ships, Expects Remote-Controlled Cargo Ships By 2020 (pcmag.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via PC Magazine: Speaking at a recent symposium in Amsterdam, Rolls-Royce vice president of innovation for marine, Oskar Levander, said, "The technologies needed to make remote and autonomous ships a reality exist." In partnership with the Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications Initiative (AAWA) project, Rolls-Royce, DNV GL, Inmarsat, Deltamarin, NAPA, Brighthouse Intelligence, Finferries, and ESL Shipping are leading the $7 million effort. Unmanned ships could save money, weight, and space, making way for more cargo and improving reliability and productivity, the AAWA said in a recent white paper. "The increased level of safety onboard will be provided by additional systems," Rolls-Royce said on its website. "Our future solutions will reduce need for human-machine interaction by automating selected tasks and processes, whilst keeping the human at the center of critical decision making and onboard expertise." Initial testing of sensor arrays in a range of operating and climatic conditions is already underway in Finland. Phase II of the project will continue through the end of 2017. Rolls-Royce plans to launch the first remote-controlled cargo ships by 2020, with autonomous boats in the water within the next two decades. Rolls-Royce was in the news last week when they unveiled their first driverless vehicle called The Vision Next 100.
Remote controlled/autonomous ships near the Horn of Africa...
Fine, the pirates board, but they can't commandeer the ship, it's still going where the shipping company wants it.
Of course, that only lasts until someone breaks the remote control protocol and sells it to the pirates.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Unmanned ships could save money, weight, and space...
Seriously? The crew and crew quarters take up a significant fraction of the operating budget, weight and volume of a modern cargo ship? I'm not buying it.
Take a look at some of these ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship
40% of a ships maintencence needs are done at sea, while under way. They can shut down parts of the engine to do maintencence on the ocean.
An remote controlled ship would spend more time at dock than current models.
And that is why remote ships won't set sail. Not pirates or crew costs but time spent being repaired at sea saves too much money.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Robot 765432 : *Oh no you have captured Robot 4858743. I must do as you command"
Pirate "Ah Ha Ha!"
Robot 765432 "JK we have a thousand more just like him back at the factory. BT We are now pumping toxic gas through the the vents, hope you didn't need air or anything squishbag. HA HA HA*
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are you unfamiliar with the notion of a bank vault?
Not one that floats and is somehow impervious to attacks by well-equipped, roving gangs of pirates, no.
I've also never seen a bank vault with an engine that could be broken or damaged, either, or one that could be towed to a location where it could be plundered at leisure.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Fly a drone onto a ship with a GPS jammer. Flip the coordinates around so that it thinks it's going to New York but is really going to Jamaica. The whole time it's transmitting the fake coordinates back to the control office where they think it's on schedule. By the time they realize it's not there, it's already been unloaded and the goods moved on.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
You can bet your last penny that the Navy and naval forces around the world are already onto this idea. In essence a man ship acts as a tow and tender until somewhat near the conflict point. Then a sort of automated battle barge goes under its own power a couple of hundred miles and assumes a position and holds it. The design probably allows waves to slosh over the deck and has sides meant to deflect torpedoes. An example could be to control the entrance to a harbor. It could also be well equipped with missiles and drones to attack cities. I also would not be shocked if these battle barges are not able to sit silently on the ocean floor until ordered to rise to the surface and take action. Since no human life support is required they can sit in total silence for quite a long time if need be. It keeps troops out of harm's way and can effectively kill enemies. I would think that several Navies are already far along with something along these lines.
Or maybe we could stop the Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos from strip-mining the Somali & Yemeni fisheries so the local fishermen didn't have to resort to piracy.
Maybe by teaching them to properly manage their own home fisheries.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
submersible ships are just as stupid as the "bank vault" idea.
too much added weight, added complexity, no real gain.
you also make loading/unloading an inefficient nightmare compared to the current system of gantries and cranes.
really though, the entire idea of entirely unmanned cargo ships is foolish anyway. they are already highly automated with the crew only there for emergencies and tasks that cannot be automated. it's why they already operate with typical crews (note difference from max crew) of 4-15 people depending on ship size/type.
the place the real unmanned advances are being made is at the loading/unloading area, with the gantries also being more and more automated. with computer databases and preplanning of loading so that multiple container shipments are stacked together in order of delivery and location (rather than being spread out randomly among the 14,000+ containers, at different locations and depths within the stacks on ship) it's all very close to maximum efficiency.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
you know that an enclosed ship IS a faraday cage right? its why the antennae's are on the outside of the hull. for an enclosed ship all they'd have to do is disconnect the antenna.
a foot thick? for a vessel 1000' long, 250' wide, and a few hundred tall?
congratulations, you just more than doubled the weight of the ship.
that's that many fewer containers it can now carry.
and again: have fun unloading 14,000 containers from your idiot design theory. there's a reason the top is open. you have twenty rows of containers? guess what: the unloading dock has 20 gantries side by side, so that each row can be unloaded at the same time. and they reach across the entire width of the ship.
to get anything close to that efficiency you'd have to have a gantry system within the enclosed cargo space, one for each rank and file of containers aboard, to move the containers to the opening to be received by the unloading gantry on the dock. but that's even more weight and complexity.
again: stop until you actually learn something about cargo ship operations.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
You're talking out of your ass now.
Oil tankers are on the order of 1" thick (per hull)
Armorer hulls never have approached 12" thick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
and you CONTINUE to ignore loading and unloading.