Autonomous cargo ship

Autonomous cargo ships, also known as autonomous container ships or maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS), are crewless vessels that transport either containers or bulk cargo over navigable waters with little or no human interaction. Different methods and levels of autonomy can be achieved through monitoring and remote control from a nearby manned ship, an onshore control center or through artificial intelligence and machine learning, letting the vessel itself decide the course of action.[1][2]

As of 2019, several autonomous cargo ship projects were in development, with the most prominent one being the construction of the MV Yara Birkeland. The Yara Birkeland is scheduled to enter trials in 2019 and operations in 2020.[3] Autonomous cargo ships are by some in the shipping industry viewed as the next logical step within maritime shipping, noting the general trend of automating tasks and reducing crews on ships. In 2016, Oskar Levander, Rolls-Royce's VP of Marine Innovation stated: "This is happening. It's not if, it's when. The technologies needed to make remote and autonomous ships a reality exist... We will see a remote controlled ship in commercial use by the end of the decade."[4]

Others have remained more skeptical, such as the CEO of the largest shipping company in the world, Søren Skou from Maersk who remarked that he does not see the advantages of removing the already downsized crews from ships, adding: "I don’t expect we will be allowed to sail around with 400-meter long container ships, weighing 200,000 tonnes without any human beings on board […] I don't think it will be a driver of efficiency, not in my time."[5][6] Regulatory, safety, legal and security challenges are viewed as the largest obstacles in making autonomous cargo ships a reality.[7]

Definition

The Maritime Safety Committee at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has proposed a preliminary definition of autonomous ships as Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) which includes the degrees of autonomy a ship can operate independently of human interaction:[8]

  • Degree one: Ship with automated processes and decision support: Seafarers are on board to operate and control shipboard systems and functions. Some operations may be automated and at times be unsupervised but with seafarers on board ready to take control.
  • Degree two: Remotely controlled ship with seafarers on board: The ship is controlled and operated from another location. Seafarers are available on board to take control and to operate the shipboard systems and functions.
  • Degree three: Remotely controlled ship without seafarers on board: The ship is controlled and operated from another location. There are no seafarers on board.
  • Degree four: Fully autonomous ship: The operating system of the ship is able to make decisions and determine actions by itself.

Concepts

Researchers from the University of Tromsø have proposed different concepts on how semi-autonomous and fully autonomous sailing might be organized.[1]

Master-Slave System envisions that a single manned "master" ship is used to coordinate and supervise a cluster of non-manned autonomous "slave" ships that follows it. Personnel with traditional maritime, engineering and ICT training will be present in order to deal with sudden events such as a communications breakdown, fire or a search and rescue operation. The Captain on Land system envisions ships that can be monitored and navigated from a trained onshore crew at a command center. Audio-visual technology would aid the crew in gaining orientation of its surrounding. It would allow for the ship to be completely autonomous in low-traffic areas, but be controlled from the command center in high traffic areas such as the Suez Canal or Straits of Malacca. Fully autonomous operations would allow the ship to sail without any human interference, gathering information and data from its surroundings and enacting a decision based on it. It can also send and receive navigational and positional data from other autonomous ships similar to airborne collision avoidance system, allowing it to take safe action if needed.[1]

Technology
See also: Autonomous robots

Autonomous ships achieve autonomy by the use of technologies similarly found in autonomous cars and autopilots. Sensors provide data with the help of infrared and visual spectrum cameras supplemented by radar, sonar, lidar, GPS and AIS which will be able to supply data for navigational use. Other data such as meteorological data and deep-sea navigation and traffic systems from onshore locations will help the vessel plot a safe course. The data would then be processed by artificial intelligence systems either on board the vessel itself or at an onshore location, proposing an optimal route and decision pattern.[9]

Potential benefits

Operational safety

According to a study conducted by Allianz in 2018, it is estimated that between 75% and 96% of maritime-related accidents are caused by human error such as employee fatigue, personal judgement errors, negligence and inadequate training. Human error caused a reported 2,712 casualties in 2018, costing $1.6B in losses from 2011 to 2016 with cargo ships accounting for 56% of all vessels lost.[10] Working on deck, for example during mooring operations, is estimated to be 5 to 16 times more dangerous than jobs onshore.[11] Several argue that by introducing fully autonomous and semi-autonomous ships, it will reduce the amount and severity of these accidents due to both a lack of crew on-board and the better performance that autonomous systems delivers.[1][12]

Reduction of costs

According to a study carried out by the Technical University of Denmark, it is estimated that an onboard crew member costs in the form of salaries, insurances and on-board provisions around 1 million DKK or $150,000 annually,[13] with crew costs typically accounting for around 20–30% of the total cost for a cargo ships journey. Semi-autonomous or fully autonomous ships can potentially reduce and eliminate these costs, creating an incentive for shipping companies who strive for cost reduction in an increasingly competitive market. Autonomous ships may however increase onshore costs in the form of large upfront investments and upkeep of control and operations centers, sensors, data servers and communication assets such as high-bandwidth satellites.[14]

Energy efficiency and environmental impact

The removal of human crews would allow the construction of ships without ship facilities needed for human operation such as the bridge or for human livability such as sleeping quarters, plumbing, mess hall and electrical wiring, reducing weight and increasing reliability. This would allow autonomous ships to be built lighter and use less of its size for the crew, reducing fuel consumption and environmental impact.[15]

Piracy

Rolls Royce have argued that low-tech piracy activities aimed towards ships and their crews will reduce as a result of ships becoming autonomous. Ships can be constructed so that it will be difficult to board them, with cargo access and manual controls being made unavailable. In the case of a piracy event, control centers can immobilize the ship or having it sail a specific course until naval authorities can reach it. Without the presence of a crew to hold hostage and ransom, the cargo ships are argued to be less valuable targets for pirates.[16]

Potential challenges

Reliability

Currently most crews on board commercial cargo ships primarily consist of navigational officers and engine crews who maintain the ship's propulsion machinery, auxiliary machinery, generators for procuring electricity, separators, pumps, cooling system. These systems are often quite complex and require regularly maintenance. Increasing redundancy is seen as the solution, either by having two engine systems or by using different propulsion methods that contain fewer moving parts such as electricity on MV Yara Birkeland.[17]

Regulation

International regulation is seen as one of the biggest challenges facing autonomous ships. Rule 5 in the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREG) requires there to be a lookout present in order to avoid collisions and the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) require ships to be able to assist in search and rescue operations, such as picking up survivors in case of a shipwreck. Without any human on-board autonomous vessels, it will be a difficult task to comply with these regulations. The IMO has begun work to review the portions of the treatises that affect autonomous shipping,[18] yet some argue that work is going too slow as advanced are being made and autonomous ships already being prepared to be launched.[19]

Cyber security

Cyber attacks have become an increased threat in maritime shipping, where hackers have managed to compromise systems such as AIS, using cheap jammers to spoof GPS signals and hacking into the servers of container terminals in order to get shipping manifests.[20] The maritime industry has been criticized for not being able to keep up with technological innovation, lagging 10–20 years behind other industries and leaving computer networks insecure and open for intrusion by organized crime and state actors.[21]

Due to the increased reliance on information and communications technology in semi- and fully autonomous ships, cyber security becomes an even more serious issue that companies would need to address. On-board ship controls and data might be compromised and vulnerable to cyber attacks as the autonomous ships require a constant connection to allow monitoring and control. The complexity of a ship design with various components from different providers can make it hard to detect and stop cyber attacks from occurring. If an autonomous ship would come under cyber attack, regaining control of the ship can become difficult because the lack of on-board crew that can take control manually. Specific systems and risk assessments for autonomous ships are proposed order to address this problem.[22]

Another problem is that due to increased data transmission needed to be sent back and forth between ships and onshore command centers, it increases the chances of "data swamping," where vast amounts of raw data will be produced and transmitted. To achieve more efficient use of storage and communication capacity, smart pre-processing and compression schemes are needed in order to reduce the chances of "data swamping."[1]

Safety concerns over implementation

Autonomous ships might improve safety by reducing human errors in the long run, but during a long transition phase to autonomous ships, these will operate alongside ships steered by humans. How these will interact with each other can create difficulty, in regards to who is to act if the ships are on collision course or how smaller vessels such as low-tech fishing ships may interact with autonomous ships.[23]

If an accident would occur with an autonomous ship, finding out who would be liable creates a difficult challenge, as several parties such as the company, the software provider, hardware provider or the onshore monitoring stations might be at fault. Historically, captains are assumed to be in overall command of the ships and are the first to put under scrutiny if anything does happen. Without a clear leader in charge, it is the role of international regulation to determine who is ultimately responsible for any incidents involving autonomous ships.[24]

See also

References
  1. Batalden, Bjorn-Morten; Leikanger, Per; Wide, Peter (2017). "Towards autonomous maritime operations". 2017 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Virtual Environments for Measurement Systems and Applications (CIVEMSA). pp. 1–6. doi:10.1109/CIVEMSA.2017.7995339. ISBN 978-1-5090-4253-1.
  2. "Some Companies Working on Autonomous Boats". nanalyze.com. Nanalyze. 7 May 2019. Retrieved 2 Oct 2019.
  3. Savvides, Nick (6 Jun 2019). "Revolution for inland shipping depends on the success of the Yara Birkeland". freightwaves.com. FreightWaves, Inc. Retrieved 29 Sep 2019.
  4. Levander, Oskar (21 June 2016). "Rolls-Royce publishes vision of the future of remote and autonomous shipping". Rolls Royce. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  5. Wienberg, Christian (15 February 2018). "Maersk's CEO Can't Imagine Self-Sailing Box Ships in His Lifetime". Bloomberg. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  6. "At Maersk, Autonomy Isn't the Next Big Thing". Maritime Executive. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  7. "Safety and shipping review 2018" (PDF). Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty. 2018. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  8. "Maritime Safety Committee (MSC), 100th session, 3–7 December 2018". International Maritime Organization. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  9. Blanke, Mogens; Henriques, Michael; Bang, Jakob. "A pre-analysis on autonomous ships" (PDF). Danish Technical University. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  10. "Safety and shipping review 2018" (PDF). Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty. 2018. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  11. Primorac, B.B.; Parunov, J. (2016). "Review of statistical data on ship accidents". G.S. & Santos (Eds.). Marine Technology and Engineering 3.
  12. Densford, Fink. "Un-man the Decks: How autonomous shipping vessels could reshape the waterways". Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  13. Blanke, Mogens; Henriques, Michael; Bang, Jakob. "A pre-analysis on autonomous ships" (PDF). Danish Technical University. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  14. Bennington-Castro, Joseph. "Robot Ships Will Bring Big Benefits — and Put Captains on Shore". NBC News. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  15. Blanke, Mogens; Henriques, Michael; Bang, Jakob. "A pre-analysis on autonomous ships" (PDF). Danish Technical University. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  16. Levander, Oskar (Feb 2017). "Autonomous ships on the high seas". IEEE Spectrum. 54 (2): 26–31. doi:10.1109/MSPEC.2017.7833502.
  17. Blanke, Mogens; Henriques, Michael; Bang, Jakob. "A pre-analysis on autonomous ships" (PDF). Danish Technical University. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  18. "IMO takes first steps to address autonomous ships". International Maritime Organization. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  19. Maxwell, Heather. "What are the regulatory barriers to autonomous ships?". Safety4Sea. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  20. Walsh, Don (July 2015). "Maritime Cyber Security: Shoal Water Ahead?". United States Naval Institute Proceedings. 141 (7): 4.
  21. L. Caponi, Steven; B. Belmon, Kate (January 2015). "Maritime Cyber Security: A Growing Threat Goes Unanswered". Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal. 27 (1): f.
  22. Katsikas, Sokratis K. (2017). "Cyber Security of the Autonomous Ship". Proceedings of the 3rd ACM Workshop on Cyber-Physical System Security. ACM: 55–56. doi:10.1145/3055186.3055191. ISBN 9781450349567. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  23. Blanke, Mogens; Henriques, Michael; Bang, Jakob. "A pre-analysis on autonomous ships" (PDF). Danish Technical University. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
  24. "Safety and shipping review 2018" (PDF). Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty. 2018. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
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