Autonomous Container Ships
 |
| Birkeland, courtesy Ong 2017 |
In 2020 Yara International plans to have a fully automated cargo ship in operation, called the Birkeland. It is designed to be a zero emission, all
electric 100-container ship covering a 37 mile route delivering goods. This route will replace the current route
which takes 40,000 truck routes currently (Ong, 20217). This is a large volume of truck traffic to
remove from the roads. The Birkeland will use an integrated system of GPS,
radar, cameras and sensors to navigate in and out of port, along its route and
for collision avoidance (Ong, 2017).
With autonomous container
ships there isn’t any opportunity to spy on individuals, there is no glaring
privacy issue. There are cameras mounted
to the container to help with docking and collision avoidance. This means there
may be accidental recordings of people that could lead to a privacy issue. The ships are recording people intentionally,
only people in the background of a recording.
Yara doesn’t need to permanently keep any of this footage. It would make
sense they need to store the footage for a short amount of time, in case of an
incident they would need the footage for any following investigations. My opinion is after two weeks the footage is reasonably
no longer needed and should be deleted. Access
to the footage should be on an as needed basis, not an open source to the
public.
In the autonomous car arena
there is an ethical issue on what the car should do in the event of an unavoidable
accident. Should the car save its
occupants at the expense of those outside the car? Should it always save the most
amount of people, possibly killing the occupants? Would anyone buy a car that could technically be
programmed to sacrifice its owner? Accidents do happen with container ships,
there are cases where they have collided with other ships, docks or bridges.
The automotive industry is still looking for an answer to its ethical dilemma. One approach it is taking is to ask people to
answer who should survive in unavoidable accidents, the answers are aggregated
to build a set of ethics for the cars to follow. The maritime industry can take the same
approach. Ask people to analyze an
unavoidable accident and choose the best course of action. Once enough people have been surveyed create
a set of rules based on the average morals.
This is a large undertaking and may not be a perfect solution, but it’s
an excellent start.
Safety is an issue for
maritime operations. Docking, navigation and collision avoidance are all
concerns for an automated vessel. Rolls
Royce is working on an autonomous vessel it hopes to launch between 2020-2025 (Levander,
2017). They are developing a situational-awareness
system “that integrate imagery from high-definition visible-light and infrared
cameras with lidar and radar measurements, providing a detailed picture of the
ship’s immediate environment” (Levander, 2017).
This information can be fed to the onboard navigation system for all
docking and navigation procedures. They
will also can feed this information to remote skipper who will pilot the ship
in if needed. Manned vessels currently
use the same information and systems to help.
Yara is developing their ships along the same lines, using sensors and
GPS so the ship knows where it is and what is immediately around it.
In the event of loss of
control or command signal there are a few options. Both Rolls Royce and Yara will be feeding all
of the information from the ship back to a remote command center, where
experienced operators can take control of the ship if needed. All safety and navigation systems on board
should monitor themselves to ensure they are operational, if a system detects
an issue the operators can take control bring the ship in safely (Levander,
2017). These ships should be designed so
that a pilot can board them and control the ship directly. In the event of signal loss with the command
center the ships can be programed to navigate to a predetermined point and
circle until a pilot can board the craft and dock it. Many ports currently require a local pilot to
board a ship and navigate it in so this operation is currently done already.
There are many issues
that still need to be worked out with autonomous container ships. Yara and
Rolls Royce are both on the fore front of this development. Both are planning to go fully autonomous in
stages. Essentially manually pilot the ship at first, then let a computer
navigate and steer in the open waters with crew on board, then the computer can
dock and eventually over a period of years crew will not be on board (Ong,
2017). With a slow introduction and
discrete steps, issues can be identified as they occur and addressed.
 |
| Autonomous Concept, courtesy Levander 2017 |
References:
Levander, O. (2017,
January 28). Forget Autonomous Cars-Autonomous Ships Are Almost Here.
Retrieved September 29, 2017, from https://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/marine/forget-autonomous-cars-autonomous-ships-are-almost-here
Ong, T. (2017, July 24).
The World's First Crewless Cargo Ship Will Launch Next Year. Retrieved
September 29, 2017, from
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/24/16018652/first-autonomous-ship-launch-2018
No comments:
Post a Comment