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Autonomous Boats Will Be On the Market Sooner Than Self-Driving Cars (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: In the autonomous revolution that is underway, nearly every transportation machine will eventually be self-driving. For cars, it's likely going to take decades before we see them operating freely, outside of test conditions. Some unmanned watercraft, on the other hand, may be at sea commercially before 2020. That's partly because automating all ships could generate a ridiculous amount of revenue. According to the United Nations, 90 percent of the world's trade is carried by sea and 10.3 billion tons of products were shipped in 2016. According to NOAA's National Ocean Service, ships transported $1.5 trillion worth of cargo through U.S. ports in 2016. The world's 325 or so deep-sea shipping companies have a combined revenue of $10 billion.
Startups and major firms like Rolls Royce are now looking to automate the seas and help maritime companies ease navigation, save fuel, improve safety, increase tonnage, and make more money. As it turns out, autonomous systems for boats aren't supremely different than those of cars, beyond a few key factors -- for instance, water is always moving while roads are not, and ships need at least a couple miles to redirect. Buffalo Automation, a startup in upstate New York that began at the University at Buffalo, just raised $900,000 to help commercialize its AutoMate system -- essentially a collection of sensors and cameras to help boats operate semi-autonomously. CEO Thiru Vikram said the company is working with three pilot partners, and intends to target cargo ships and recreational vessels first. Autonomous ships are an area of particular interest for the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which sets the standards for international waters. It launched a regulatory scoping exercise last year to analyze the impact of autonomous boats. By the time it wraps in 2020, market demand may make it so that we already have semi-autonomous and unmanned vessels at sea.
Startups and major firms like Rolls Royce are now looking to automate the seas and help maritime companies ease navigation, save fuel, improve safety, increase tonnage, and make more money. As it turns out, autonomous systems for boats aren't supremely different than those of cars, beyond a few key factors -- for instance, water is always moving while roads are not, and ships need at least a couple miles to redirect. Buffalo Automation, a startup in upstate New York that began at the University at Buffalo, just raised $900,000 to help commercialize its AutoMate system -- essentially a collection of sensors and cameras to help boats operate semi-autonomously. CEO Thiru Vikram said the company is working with three pilot partners, and intends to target cargo ships and recreational vessels first. Autonomous ships are an area of particular interest for the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which sets the standards for international waters. It launched a regulatory scoping exercise last year to analyze the impact of autonomous boats. By the time it wraps in 2020, market demand may make it so that we already have semi-autonomous and unmanned vessels at sea.
Boat and plane navigation is reasonably similar - it's 'head to waypoint', not 'navigate through twisty curves'.
That's partly because automating all ships could generate a ridiculous amount of revenue. According to the United Nations, 90 percent of the world's trade is carried by sea and 10.3 billion tons of products were shipped in 2016. According to NOAA's National Ocean Service, ships transported $1.5 trillion worth of cargo through U.S. ports in 2016. The world's 325 or so deep-sea shipping companies have a combined revenue of $10 billion.
Notice how none of these statistics address, at all, how much money there is in automating ships? Besides the hand-waving, the article doesn't address it at all.
I mean, I'm sure that there's some, but just because most cargo goes by sea doesn't necessarily mean anything in relation to whether automating ships can save any money or increase revenue.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Call me stupid if you must, but I have a hard time understanding the trend towards the 'driver-less' vehicles - from cars to vessels to perhaps, airplanes
'In the autonomous revolution that is underway, nearly every transportation machine will eventually be self-driving.'
No, they won't. If any of this comes about at all, it'll be restricted to vehicles in remote or controlled places (like the middle of the sea or closed driving areas) and it will likely only go about as far as autopilot on commercial jets. No more deaths would be tolerated under any circumstances in any kind of test. This is really no different than what the military in terms of R & D did in the 20th century, they just did it in private. They were rarely successful and not much of what they experimented with ever saw the light of day.
Speculation and wishful thinking do not state fact or even eventuality. The tunnel vision and lack of critical thought in these pieces, which are pure editorialization, is astounding. They certainly do nothing to defy the notion that most engineers are on the spectrum. Not gonna happen.
Maybe start with a pilot program.
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Simple problems are simple
The environment is simply more forgiving and more constrained for boats, planes, space probes, mining equipment, farming equipment, tunnel service robots, and non-personal autonomous systems (aka pizza delivery bots on sidewalks). They all will appear on the market before a consumer-grade L5 car will be available to fleet operators on a large scale, meaning servicing everything from northern Alaska to southern Patagonia during any season in any city.
Everybody, including Google, has only demonstration systems that operate under very specific constrained environments. They are impressive (especially Google's system), push innovation (e.g., autopilot and supercruise), and are fun to think about, but nowhere near that they could start manufacturing them with a profit to be sold to fleet operators at Level 5.
Combined with using workers from countries with lower pay and safety barriers for maritime workers, this helps put pressure on the remaining workers to get paid less. It's win win win for everybody except the line workers, who will get fucked like the rest of us by automation.
The only bright side to all this is there is a new possibility for the rest of us to work towards semi-autonomous vessels that can remain permanently at sea, following the oceanic currents, and only need enough supplies for stationkeeping/course correction when caught in storms. Done correctly the fuel supplies for those can be synthesized from the sea using solar/wind power or biological processes, leaving only a relatively small amount of tech that requires ongoing maintenance, plus hull cleaning. Active galvanic systems (assuming a steel hull) or a concrete/geopolymer hull can take care of the rest.
As with all new technology its going to be abused by someone. Drug smugglers and human traffickers come to mind.
Why put yourself at risk when you can have a Autonomous Boat to do all the work.
These kinds of ships spend almost their entire voyage on "auto pilot" now, and they require a local pilot and tug to navigate into harbor. With the lack of personnel I'd bet insurance rates go down in case of piracy, the need for food and crew space goes away and can be used for more cargo. The ships will still be met and guided into any harbor by the same system we use now.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Let us face it: driving cars was one of those things which seemed easy for a computer to do but which has turned out to be very hard and probably impossible to do safely. Perhaps not ever as safe as a human. Yes I know they can... in movies. We're talking about real life here.
Boats are another thing that seem easy but ocean conditions can be treacherous. I remember a boater timing a surge to cross a bar with the waves. Let's see a computer boat do that any better.
Apparently China loses a freighter every other day. It was causally mentioned in a news story because an American freighter went down (which is rare). It's bizarre to think that as I type this there's a 50/50 chance an entire ship's crew is going to die. It's also bizarre that their cargo and lives are so cheap that nobody notices or cares. I'd love to think we could put an end to that with humanitarianism, but hell, I didn't even know about it until it was mentioned offhand in an article...
Oh, one other thing, is it just me or do a lot of these start ups come out of Universities? It kinda bugs me that my tax dollars go to something that's promptly turned into profit for investors. Maybe it got funded with private funds (which raises the question of why public Universities have to go begging for private funds) but I'd like to see more open research that's free to the public.
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For example, cruise ships have typically been run by autopilot for years already.
http://www.beyondships2.com/fa...
They don't even drop anchor in port, but just tell the autopilot to hold position.
Compared to cars, automatically piloting ships is easy, because there is a lot more room for error. For most of the journey, if the boat is half a mile off course, nobody cares!
This really seems like something the the US Navy needs... desperately. For everyone else though... the ocean is pretty large so likely it is not so urgent.
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/0...
The problem is not that the technology is bad. The problem is that going to sea is much more complicated than non-seagoing people think. And, the sea is terribly unforgiving of any mistakes, incapacity or inattentiveness. We have gyrocompasses but we do check them against the magnetic compass. We have wonderful tracking radars with gyro stabilized displays. But, we still have lookouts for the things that radars do not pick up (like small boats). Satellite navigation provides us with accurate fixes, 24 hours a day. But, I still brought my sextant, and was expected to use it.
The engine room has a similar situation. Having engineers to maintain and repair the equipment is imperative. There are no repair crews when you are in the middle of the ocean.
A completely automated ship is even less likely than an automated airliner without a pilot.
They need to add lots of DRM to protect themselves from pirates.
eTrac Engineering has been using my system in and around the SF bay since 2008. Since we're talking about innovation, hey, did you hear about bitcoin?
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
In related news, hostage taking pirates at risk of losing their jobs due to automation on ships.
Of these, only 3 or 4 are directly involved in steering the ship: The captain, and a couple of deck officers, all of whom have other duties as well.
And the article mentions that the current systems are only semi-autonomous.
Means you won't be completely replacing the whole 3-4 guys steering the ship.
The captain will still be around, probably at least one of the deck officers, in order to overwatch the semi-autonomous system whenever it requires human supervision.
Compared to all the money involved in shipping cargo on huge container ship, the difference of salaries will barely register.
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But won't this now make it possible for The Plague to put his tanker capsizing virus on the Gibson as cover for stealing the money?
Pirates are gonna LOVE these puppies!
Agree and thanks for sharing your insight! OP TFA is a stupid idea. I didn't originate on a ship or on a shipping company but from a university. Another case of technology chasing a problem which doesn't exist.
"a startup in upstate New York that began at the University at Buffalo, just raised $900,000 to help commercialize its AutoMate system -- essentially a collection of sensors and cameras to help boats operate semi-autonomously. CEO Thiru Vikram"
The whole article smacks of PR. Look at this: "Autonomous ships are an area of particular interest for the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which sets the standards for international waters. It launched a regulatory scoping exercise last year to analyze the impact of autonomous boats. "particular interest" != regulatory scoping. My bullshit detector is going off.
We have much fewer boats than cars over a surface that much larger than all the streets put together.
The possibility of a shipcrash are much lower.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
All those containers get loaded and unloaded by people operating cranes. Being able to optimize crane movement has got to be worth a lot of money in reducing the time a ship has to be at the dock.
-jcr
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Out on the open sea, when it's calm, all you need is a radar to look out for other ships, and a GPS to know where you're going.
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I knew a guy working on autonomous boats (racing - basically an X prize kinda thing). They discovered one major issue - in international waters, a boat with no people on it is subject to salvage by international treaty! Yep, they could not run their contest in the open ocean, or someone could come by, and TAKE the boat
Gonna takes some changes, or at least have one member of a caretaker crew
There are no month long voyages anymore since about 100 years ... just saying.
Do you ever check your facts before spouting off on a topic? Container ships routinely are at see for approximately a month. It takes around 25 days to transit across the Pacific from Sydney to LA. The trip from Germany to Chile takes 28 days. Typical travel speed of a large container ship is something like 15-20 knots. Do the math.
Type "aboard a container ship" into the YouTube search bar. Pick a result, preferably a documentary. My takeaway (I'm not a maritime expert, nor do I play one on TV) is that piloting a large vessel on the high seas is rather far down the list of challenges faced by the crew, robotic or human. Things break. Shit happens (Pirates, anyone? People on a disabled small craft who are frantically waving a beach towel?). As other posters have observed, most commercial vessels are already operating with a minimal crew, most of whose members are there to respond to the unexpected.
And instead of armed fast boats, pirates could seize a boat remotely without even getting their feet wet. Because, I am sure, the security of these systems will be first rate...
Its not self-driving until I can get in the back seat and sleep while attaining my destination. Then get out, tell the car to go park itself somewhere, and summon it later when I'm done.
This nonsense of someone sitting in a driver's seat, breathlessly waiting to grab the wheel away from the errant computer is just a formula to 1) die in a horrible accident or 2) get your ass sued off because you are incapable of being that attentive with nothing concerning you is happening for hours and hours. Someone should probably do a study, but It think it is probably humanly impossible to perform that role. You're just someone to sue when things go wrong.
Either the car drives, or I drive, no half-assed partnership will be tolerated. I get to sit and play video games, or I make every decision and execute every direction correction myself. There's no in-between if you're trying to sell me a "self-driving" car.
Presumably boats don't have to deal with pedestrians stepping out in front of them - at least, not these days.
Unmanned ships carrying valuable cargo? All I can say is: ARRRRRR! (There will be a global renaissance of piracy on the high seas! Why pirate some crappy movies or songs when you can take control of hundreds of tons of actual merchandise!)
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There is no way you can automate that shit.
Jesus, it looks like a destruction derby with the combination of snow, ice, and wild west driving. Those dash cams are amazing.
They are on Youtube.
In many cases, there is just nothing the person driving the car can do.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This is all fine and dandy, but when will we finally see autonomous humans?
With such limited crews, how will the ships handle emergencies such as fires or taking on water? A minimum number of people are required to deal with these emergencies.
Will they just let them sink into the ocean and deal with the cleanup afterwards?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Seems like another obvious candidate to me.