The world’s first fully autonomous ferry has been demonstrated in Finland, a feat that saw Finferries’ Falco – a 53.8m double-ended car ferry – navigate its way between Parainen and Nauvo.
The Falco used a combination of Rolls-Royce Ship Intelligence technologies to make the outward journey. The vessel detected objects using sensor fusion and artificial intelligence and conducted collision avoidance. It also demonstrated automatic berthing with an autonomous navigation system, a feature that enables the vessel to automatically alter course and speed when approaching the quay.
According to Rolls-Royce, the Falco is equipped with advanced sensors which allows it to build a detailed picture of its surroundings in real time. The situational awareness picture is created by fusing sensor data and relaying it to Finferries’ remote operating centre on land, which is 50km away in Turku city centre. Here, a captain monitors the autonomous operations, and can take control of the vessel if necessary.
“Autonomous shipping will happen”
Earlier this year Rolls-Royce and Finferries began collaborating on SVAN (Safer Vessel with Autonomous Navigation), to continue implementing the findings from the earlier Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications (AAWA) research project, funded by Business Finland.
Mikael Makinen, Rolls-Royce, president – Commercial Marine, said: “Today marks a huge step forward in the journey towards autonomous shipping and reaffirms exactly what we have been saying for several years, that autonomous shipping will happen.
“Today’s demonstration proves that the autonomous ship is not just a concept, but something that will transform shipping as we know it.”
Mats Rosin, Finferries’ CEO, added: “As a modern ship-owner our main goal in this cooperation has been on increasing safety in marine traffic as this is beneficial for both the environment and our passengers. But we are also equally excited about how this demonstration opens the door to the new possibilities of autonomous shipping and safety.”
The Falco entered service with Finferries in 1993 and is equipped with twin azimuth thrusters from Rolls-Royce.
Will is see moored yachts in poor visibility? If “yes” it would make things a lot safer in the crowded waters of the Solent. The Isle of Whyte ferry has crashed into yachts twice in recent months. (It strayed out of the channel into moored yachts in visibility of 100m).
Its Isle of Wight and yes it would make he Solent safer
There are still issues relating to accident and collision liabilities that may be the real limitation on a larger adoption of this concept. Ferries are one thing. Large ocean going vessels are another. I suspect the insurance premiums for a crewless vessel might have a serious commercial impact. Surely much better to have a skeleton crew able to intervene in the event of emergencies and equipment failures. Is this a case of feasibility overcoming desirability?
Safety considerations will surely prevent widespread adoption, e.g in the event of a vehicle fire or collision aboard or a man overboard . Also Insurance premiums will go up .
There will be no persons on board to fall over!
It’s a ferry, Mike. Ferries have passengers.
And here was me thinking that these were autonomous cars!
If my grand-children are any measure, we will shortly conduct our entire lives from the comfort of a smart phone never needing to go anywhere by any form of transport!
Interesting following the string of article that lead up to this point.
Of course it is possible to automate shipping, indeed it is in so many ways easier than autonomous road vehicles. However, I have colleagues who are ex Merchant and Royal Navy and the life of the crew is one of constant checking and maintenance and part of this so that they know the ship intimately for that emergency situation. If an autonomous ship was without any human life on board then one could take the view if it sinks then so be it. I wonder how we reconcile that with a ferry for example that would have passengers of all ages and capabilities on board?
Worst ferry disasters such as Herald of Free Enterprise were man made so what does that tell us?It tells us that in that case the systems that allowed the disaster to happen were flawed, again by design or maintenance a human cause, automated shipping could still suffer the same fate.
At the end of the day we can automate anything, aircraft, ships, cars and for the last 35 years logistics in industry plus an incredible array of other things.
When we consider an area of great success of full automation a good example is London’s Docklands Light Railway. The principle of the DLR operation is actually very simple and one that has been used in industry since the late 70’s. Couple this with the fact that it is on rails with several stages of redundancy in the speed control and stopping process it is pretty safe, the operational record shows bears testament to this.
The prime reason we have not automated millions of cars is one of assured human safety not machine capability despite the fact that most accidents are cause by humans.
Not too different from guardless trains where the driver is isolated for security reasons and could be a robot .
Where is Hammer Horror when you need them!
Some interesting comments here, but I think some people are confusing autonomous with unmanned. The autonomy present in the ship described seems (at least to me) to be confined to navigation, power, berthing etc. I am certain that no ferry would ever get any passengers to board it if there was no friendly human to marshal the passengers and cargo, serve the coffee and most importantly be in charge of the safety equipment.
It does however raise some other thoughts, so much of the dire warnings recently have indicated that all manual type jobs will be superseded by robots and only skilled roles will remain to be done by humans. In this instance it would appear that the more skilled roles are the ones under threat.
In the event the technology will evolve in accordance with what the public will accept and a balance will be achieved between automation and human tasks as has been the case since the wheel was invented.
Congratulations to Rolls- Royce and Finferries for the successful “FALCO” project.But a few more important mile stones need to be crossed in order to make autonomous shipping absolutely safe, secure, reliable and legal. There is also a need to ensure that there is no adverse socio-economic impact due to the introduction of autonomous shipping.The recent unfortunate event of the Ethiopian plane crash should open our eyes to the fact that automation is a good servant but could prove to be a bad master. If man himself is imperfect, can man made devices, however sophisticated they are, be perfect? The basic design principle of automation system is that it should have a robust manual back up.