Yahoo Autos Self-Sailing Ships Could Revolutionize Dangerous and Dull Routes
Self-sailing ships could save logistics firms a boat-load of cash.
Self-driving tech is all the rage these days, with companies looking to remove the need for a driver in cars, taxis and even trucks or trains. But the tech isn’t limited to dry land, and companies around the world are looking at new ways to remove the need for crews on container ships. Now, a BBC report has uncovered work that experts are undertaking to make “safe and secure” autonomous vessels to haul freight across the waves.
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According to the report, a fertilizer company in Norway is working to slowly remove the crews that operate one of its 80-meter (260-foot) container ships. Currently the Yara Birkeland, which can carry up to 100 containers, operates with a crew of five on journeys along the Frier Fjord in southern Norway. But by the end of this year, the crew will be cut down to two, with aims of removing the bridge entirely over the next two years.
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When that happens, the ship’s captain will be based at an on-shore operations center, where they will remotely oversee the voyages undertaken by several ships at once. There, they will be able to intervene if necessary but, on the whole, the ships will simply sail themselves.
In order to make the vessel capable of sailing itself, the ship’s owner Yara has fitted it with sensors and cameras that scan the route it takes up the Frier Fjord. On the journey, which the Yara Birkeland makes twice a week, it collects data about the voyage, conditions and its surroundings.
Repetitive journeys like this, the BBC says, offer a perfect way to introduce autonomous ships to the system. In Norway, the BBC report uncovered this Yara voyage, as well as similar projects involving two battery-powered autonomous barges in the Oslo Fjord, each operated by Nordic grocer Asko, and a fourth container ship that operates near Ålesund. All of these vessels use technology from autonomous vehicle expert Kongsberg.
“You can use autonomy to limit tasks that are dangerous or boring,” Marius Tannum, an Associate Professor of Applied Autonomy at the University of South-Eastern Norway, told the BBC.
