THE AUTONOMOUS SHIP

February 24th, 2013 by JCB
Posted in Articles, Technical and Training | No Comments »

“Good morning control centre, this is the pilot speaking, I’ve just boarded so can you activate the coffee machine please?”

I can recall that back in 1969 when I was a pre-sea apprentice and America landed a man on the moon the concept of unmanned ships proceeding between ports was a topical subject in the maritime press. During the last four decades the  concept has simmered on the back burner without much impetus but recently there has been a considerable rivival of interest in the concept. Last December a seminar on Autonomous Ship’s was organised by the Royal Institute of Navigation and one of my London colleagues attended and submitted the following report.       JCB

Held at the Inmarsat HQ in London, around 50 delegates were present with a panel of 6 speakers. Most of the delegates  came from technological firms and there were also academic persons from a few universities. Very few of the delegates came from the maritime industry, but there was a representative from the MCA.

The seminar consisted of several presentations by those with a professional interest in autonomous systems although none of them appeared to come from the maritime industry.

The idea of the seminar was to consider whether some the  technologies used in other areas of transport that are autonomous could be applied to ships.

The Technology Strategy Board (TSB) [an executive non-departmental public body, established by the Government in 2007 and sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)] is currently running a competition entitled Vessel efficiency: Piloting UK marine and maritime innovation. They are offering a prize of £8m towards Research and Development to the best proposal for a project which delivers viable solutions for more efficient marine vessels. A speaker from the TSB Knowledge Transfer Network outlined the scope of the competition. Further details on the TSB web site.

http://www.innovateuk.org/content/competition/vessel-efficiency-piloting-uk-marine-and-maritime-.ashx

The seminar chairman, Dr. Andy Norris opened the seminar by explaining some of the bureaucratic obstacles that might prevent Autonomous ships.  Firstly getting IMO approval would be a long drawn out affair since it might take 7 years from conception to implementation and as yet the matter is not even being considered(by IMO). Dr. Norris  was also of the opinion that the COLREGS would have to have several amendments  made to them in particular, rules with reference to sight, visibility, sound signals, and hearing.  Again this would be a lengthy process.

However, he went on to inform delegates that since the year 2000 several organisations  have demonstrated automatic collision avoidance decision making processors designed for maritime use.

The speakers gave various examples and explanations particularly of autonomous aircraft. This gave the impression  that there’s a thriving industry in this sector, much larger than I previously thought. Explanation was given about how the software that controls them and how collision avoidance is effected. Further presentations were made, firstly by an oceanographer concerning his underwater vehicle that was fitted with collision avoidance sensors which enabled it to navigate in the antarctic avoiding the ice, followed by a representative from a satellite company which illustrated some aspects of the autonomous control used. Later there was a presentation from Inmarsat who are quite clearly very excited about the business opportunities for the company that  the advent of autonomous ships could bring since Inmarsat is the World’s leading marine communications company.

All these presentations generated an atmosphere in the room of “look, this is what has been achieved already with aircraft, underwater vessels and satellites, next on the agenda is shipping which should not be too difficult.”

Delegates were given a guided tour of the Inmarsat satellite control room, which looked a bit like mission control Houston!

At the end of proceedings, a panel was formed consisting of most of the speakers and all delegates were invited to put forward questions. The question I wished to ask was what was the panel’s view of things should a cyber-terrorist decide to attempt to infiltrate the system for controlling a super-tanker or a 400m Container vessel, resulting in loss of control of the vessel and an incident with the loss of a vessel and pollution. When  I asked this question, there was a moment of silence before Andy Norris, agreed that was a very good point, and asked the panel to respond. The answers they attempted to give were a long way short of convincing, indeed it appeared that they really had not considered this factor and didn’t have an answer. Dr. Norris commented that a determined cyber-terrorist would be attracted to the biggest and most valuable targets, and shipping falls into this category.

After this the MCA representative advised the panel of some points that would need to be addressed such as:

Reliability of the equipment,

Uncharted areas of the World

Reliability of communications

Maintenance of the vessel

Vessel in heavy weather experiencing hull stress and torsion.

All of these factors will need to be considered in detail. Also there was the question of the Voice Data Recorder in the case of an incident. Dr. Norris had already commented that with respect to changes that would be needed to the COLREGS, when a unmanned ship is in conflict with a manned ship who has priority?

So as you can see there are plenty of serious points to consider when it comes to Autonomous ships.

The Royal Institute of Navigation are holding a further seminar on this topic in Southampton on February 21st. 

Although embryonic, this agenda is currently being driven by technical  experts who have little idea of how ships operate so the input of professional mariners is vital   and will therefore be followed closely by the UKMPA.         JCB