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Rolls-Royce Wants To Fill the Seas With Self-Sailing Ships (wired.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: "Helsinki VTS, thank you for permission to depart," the captain says over the radio. He checks with the Vessel Traffic Service to see if there's anything to be looking out for. Just one other big ship, but also lots of small boats, enjoying the calm water, which could be hazards. Not a problem for this captain -- he has a giant screen on the bridge, which overlays the environment around his vessel with an augmented reality view. He can navigate the Baltic Discoverer confidently out of Finland's Helsinki Port using the computer-enhanced vision of the world, with artificial intelligence spotting and labeling every other water user, the shore, and navigation markers.
This not-too-far-in-the-future vision comes from Rolls-Royce. (One iteration of it, anyway: The Rolls-Royce car company, the jet engine maker, and this marine-focused enterprise all have different corporate owners.) The view provided to the crew of the (fictional) Baltic Discoverer is an example of the company's Intelligent Awareness system, which mashes together data from sensors all over a vessel, to give its humans a better view of the world. But that's just the early part of the plan. Using cameras, lidar, and radar, Rolls wants to make completely autonomous ships. And it's already running trials around the world.
"Tugs, ferries, and short-sea transport, these are all classes of vessels that we believe would be suitable for completely autonomous operations, monitored by a land based crew, who get to go home every night," says Kevin Daffey, Rolls-Royce's director of marine engineering and technology. Suitable, because they all currently rely on humans who demand to be paid -- and can make costly mistakes. Over the past decade, there have been more than 1,000 total losses of large ships, and at least 70 percent of those resulted from human error. [...] Moreover, the economic case for automating shipping is clear: About 100,000 large vessels are currently sailing the world's oceans, and the amount of cargo they carry is projected to grow around 4 percent a year, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Beyond preventing accidents, human-free ships could be 15 percent more efficient to run, because they don't need energy-gobbling life support systems, doing things like heating, cooking, and lugging drinking water along for the ride.
This not-too-far-in-the-future vision comes from Rolls-Royce. (One iteration of it, anyway: The Rolls-Royce car company, the jet engine maker, and this marine-focused enterprise all have different corporate owners.) The view provided to the crew of the (fictional) Baltic Discoverer is an example of the company's Intelligent Awareness system, which mashes together data from sensors all over a vessel, to give its humans a better view of the world. But that's just the early part of the plan. Using cameras, lidar, and radar, Rolls wants to make completely autonomous ships. And it's already running trials around the world.
"Tugs, ferries, and short-sea transport, these are all classes of vessels that we believe would be suitable for completely autonomous operations, monitored by a land based crew, who get to go home every night," says Kevin Daffey, Rolls-Royce's director of marine engineering and technology. Suitable, because they all currently rely on humans who demand to be paid -- and can make costly mistakes. Over the past decade, there have been more than 1,000 total losses of large ships, and at least 70 percent of those resulted from human error. [...] Moreover, the economic case for automating shipping is clear: About 100,000 large vessels are currently sailing the world's oceans, and the amount of cargo they carry is projected to grow around 4 percent a year, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Beyond preventing accidents, human-free ships could be 15 percent more efficient to run, because they don't need energy-gobbling life support systems, doing things like heating, cooking, and lugging drinking water along for the ride.
They dont have to deal with some captain who is armed.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Sheesh - I'm flashing back to Star Trek.
"DAYSTROM: You can't understand. You're frightened because you can't understand it. I'm going to show you. I'm going to show all of you. It takes four hundred thirty people to man a starship. With this, you don't need anyone. One machine can do all those things they send men out to do now. Men no longer need die in space or on some alien world. Men can live and go on to achieve greater things than fact-finding and dying for galactic space, which is neither ours to give or to take. They can't understand. We don't want to destroy life, we want to save it."
"KIRK: There are certain things men must do to remain men. Your computer would take that away.
DAYSTROM: There are other things a man like you might do. Or perhaps you object to the possible loss of prestige and ceremony accorded a starship captain. A computer can do your job and without all that.
KIRK: You'll have to prove that to me, Doctor.
DAYSTROM: That is what we're here for, isn't it, Captain? "
Gee, that's pretty much naive beyond words. It's nice to know people this simplistic aren't in charge of nuclear arsenals... oh wait.
They don't even have to have a ship - just sit at home, hack the controls and become a high-tech version of a Cornish wrecker. This could take online piracy to a whole new level.
Let's say 1000 automated cargo freighters.
Typical ship has a crew compliment of 22 - 27 (https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-typical-crew-of-a-cargo-ship-composed-of) with an average salary of $73,590 per year (https://work.chron.com/average-salary-workers-deep-draft-vessels-7101.html)
So 1000 x 22 x $73,590 = 1,618,980,000 (yep, those zeros are correct) Let's just say 1.6 billion per year to pay crew.
That's not counting food (they have to eat out there), kitchens, facilities, etc, etc. So the actual cost is even higher. Now I guess you'd have to weigh that against the cost of sending a helicopter and a specialist crew in the event of a problem, but 1.6B+ would probably pay for quite a few emergencies.
If what I read a while back was true the US Navy is already ahead on automated ships. The idea was something like an old battle barge with limited propulsion and water sloshing over the decks. It would be towed into place by a large war ship and set free for the last two or three hundred miles. It would stop at a pre determined location and wait for the weapons to be used if need be. I do not know the degree to which it is a drone or if it can attack without any human contact. Being unmanned, the danger to seamen is vastly reduced as well as this war machine not needing to carry food and sleeping areas etc..
Actually....
I think the issue here is not bunker oil, but sulfur content of said fuel.
Right now, I understand that the use of low grade high sulfur fuel outside of territorial waters is common for financial reasons as no single country can unilaterally ban it's use in international waters. I believe what's happening is countries are starting to band together to stop the sale of these fuels or prohibit passage of ships though their territorial waters that carry it in their tanks, even if they don't use it and they are working with the UN on a treaty about this.
Bunker oil isn't going away anytime soon, in fact it's a common fuel in undeveloped countries setting up quickie electrical power generation plants for industrial or commercial use. What may be happening is refiners may have to process it a bit more to remove the sulfur, and it will cost more as a result, but it's way to cheap and efficient of a fuel to just stop using.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If no human is aboard the ship and it is in international waters, then it is by definition abandoned per maritime law.
As a malicious user I love the idea of being able to remotely pilot a Qmax lng tanker into my target. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that. Not a thing.
I must say, I grew up in the '80s. I got tours of airplane cockpits. I saw lots of buttons. Never did I think that in the future there'd be MORE controls. Technology promised to remove clutter, to make things simpler.
It hasn't.
Being able to see every vessel and marker and shoreline around you doesn't make things easier. It makes things harder. Automating with more information just shifts the hard to setup, installation, configuration, planning, maintenance, troubleshooting, and repair.
Explain to me how ten-thousand ants can stream through a tiny crack in my kitchen wall. Explain to me how hen-thousand bees can work together in a single hive. Explain to me how fifty-thousand humans can fill and empty a baseball stadium. thousands of small birds. mosquitoes. schooling fish. flocks, schools, pods, herds, murders.
In every existing system, many millions of years old, there is no augmented reality. There is wide-angle overview. They all work brilliantly.
If your system requires more information to be present, then it's not the better solution. Here's hoping it gives you a better perspective on the better solution. ...and if you're anything like me, you're picturing bumper boats, bumper ferries, and bumper cruise ships!
The biggest cargo ship in operation at the moment is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
180kt.
It has a crew of 31. Assuming the crew consists of 100kg heavy hard working muscle men, they would weight 3.1t.
Considering that hot water usually is made from waste heat of the engines, and cooking is done with gas stoves or electric, considering that the ship probably carries 100 times more water as ballast than freshwater for the crew, it is in no way plausible that such a small crew in relation to the size of the ship and cargo would save 15% fuel. They hardly will need so much light aka electricity for their TVs and room lighting either ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
A ship covered in sensors being monitored 24/7 by an on board AI would be much more likely to spot a life raft or improvised vessel a cast away might build. Consider the AI never sleeps, has 360 degree awareness and would be able to see in the dark.
I remember in the movie "All is Lost" the main character's life raft was passed by a cargo vessel at night, and the crew didn't notice his flares. An AI system, hopefully programmed for such cases, would have likely spotted the life raft and alerted it's operators to notify rescue services.
Potentially the ships could even carry a small GPS tracker equipped drone that could fly/swim to the life raft and guide rescue craft to it. A couple drones per ship would cost less than a days wages for a crew member, and you would only have to buy a new one if it was lost while deployed.
Batteries are so not environmentally friendly
Yes, they are. Or would you throw away a piece of hardware which's value in raw materials is approximately 50% of its retail price? Batteries get recycled, all over the planet, since decades.
Although I doubt it's worth it as Fuel is incredibly cheap for these ships,
Nevertheless it is still one of the main contributions to running costs.
And "time is money" especially in the shipping business and in the grand scheme of things, shipping emissions are no more than a rounding error compared to aircraft transport. ... at least regarding SOx emissions. The reason behind that is pretty simple: if we had not increased SOx emissions so boldly in the last decades, the greenhouse effect due to CO2 would already be a runaway effect.
That is completely wrong. Shipping emissions are the main emissions on the plant. And will stay so for minimum 50 years
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.