Intelligent ships capable of acting like floating data centres, processing and storing huge amounts of information, are being made possible thanks to a collaboration between Rolls-Royce and Intel.
Rolls-Royce has recently developed the Intelligent Awareness System, which uses AI-based sensor fusion and decision-making technology to process information from a wide range of sources, including lidar, radar, thermal cameras, High Definition cameras, satellite data and weather forecasts.
This should help to improve maritime safety by making the ships’ crew more aware of their surroundings and the environmental conditions, and allowing them to detect other vessels or objects kilometres away, even in busy ports.
This is particularly important at night, in adverse weather conditions, or in congested waters, according to Kevin Daffey, director of ship intelligence at Rolls-Royce.
“It presents an unparalleled situational awareness of what’s around the vessel to the watch-keepers on the bridge, including distances, the names of the vessels that are near them, or how far they are from land,” he said.
“Over the next three years we’ll begin to see the first commercially-operated ships with some degree of autonomous functionality on board, moving towards vessels that can make their own decisions from around 2025 onwards,” he said.
Dangerous conditions in the ocean have resulted in 1,129 shipping losses over the past 10 years, of which 70-90 per cent have involved a human decision that contributed to the accident, said Daffey.
Intelligent shipping systems can reduce the potential for human error by automating routine tasks and processes, freeing the crew to focus on critical decision-making. It also means some crew members can be taken off the ship and on to shore, where they are less at risk, said Daffey.
Each vessel can capture up to one terabyte of information from the various sensors per day, or 30-40TB over a month-long voyage. To cope with all of this incoming data, the systems use Intel Xeon Scalable processors.
The data is stored in 3D NAND SSDs, a type of solid-state storage device using flash memory, in which memory cells are stacked vertically in multiple layers. These act as a “black box”, allowing the information to be accessed for analysis and training once the ship has docked.
Rolls-Royce recently carried out a pilot off the coast of Japan, in which the technology helped the crew of a passenger ferry owned by Japanese shipping company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines to detect potential obstacles in the water when traveling at night.
The company is now developing autonomous navigation technology, to allow vessels to safely navigate from their port of departure to their port of arrival, in the safest and most efficient way possible, said Daffey.
“That is what we are working on at the moment, this ability for route-planning, collision avoidance, tracking the vessel to make sure it will arrive at its destination when it’s meant to,” he said.
In May the International Maritime Organisation established a working group to look at what changes are required to the current legislation in order to allow vessels to operate either remotely or unmanned in the open ocean. This process is likely to take several years to complete.
However, individual countries can provide their own legislative framework for the vessels to operate, Daffey said. “There are a lot of vessels that operate just within coastal waters, that are really good for autonomous operation, such as tugs and short sea cargo shipping,” he said.
And although there are concerns about cybercrime in relation to all forms of autonomous transport, the technology allows companies to more closely control all communication with vessels than is currently possible with conventional ships, which can have disparate systems, Daffey said.
Removing humans from danger is surely the ultimate Health & Safety effort. Removing them from traversing the seas (where for the most part they are simply acting as chaperones for containers) full of inanimate ‘stuff’ possibly the worst wasted use of a human skills, and life. Roll on autonomous vessels of all types and all mediums of travel (land, air, water)
Yes, accept the occasional ‘blip’ -[just as Local authorities pay-out on occasional pavement trips and falls -cheaper that repairs!] and lost vessels and cargo, but not human life.
and cars?
“Chaperones for containers” – you seem to have a very limited knowledge of ships, seafaring, what can go wrong at sea and the potential results of a maritime disaster!
I have almost no knowledge of the areas you define: my point was (and is) that if the technology now is advanced sufficiently that control of the passage of a vessel through normal and hostile seas is possible from the comfort of a land-based office! all the ‘crew’ presently are there for is to deal with emergencies. Where the greatest danger is to the crew, not the ship or its cargo.
Let the occasional cargo and vessel be lost but no longer need lives be at risk. I am reminded of the new aircraft piloting scenario : one technician and a dog. The technician is there to feed the dog and the dog is there bite the technician if he/she touches any of the controls. I jest, but if ‘we’ can now control from Kansas a drone that is deployed in Karbul or Keighley or wherever, surely doing the same at sea in two dimensions is an order of magnitude simpler.
I did once have an expert witness case, involving a cargo of cotton in transit from India to Brazil.
It happened that the Harbour authorities in Bombay insisted that the dock-side be swept and cotton waste (and several stubbed-out but still capable of igniting the cargo, cigarette ends) was put into the hold. Several days into the voyage, the fire was well established! The automatic sprinkler/CO2 system activated and the fire seemed to be contained: so one of the crew decided to open the hatches to make sure. Needless to say all the fire needed to really get going was an additional supply of air. I believe the lawyers called it a day (having extracted as much as they could from boat owner and cargo owner) at about $150,000,000 in fees: much more than the value of the vessel and its cargo. It would have been better if it had been allowed to sink!
Strange how the one mode of transport that’s arguably MOST suited to autonomous operation – railway trains – seem to be excluded from this technology and indeed some folk insist TWO people are needed for safe operation; despite the exclusion of ‘steering’ from the job description …
There are autonomous trains in operation at various points in the World, but they are all on newly built tracks.
The problem with existing track is that the existing train drivers are guards are going on strike to get a deal that says that the train company will never even consider automation at any point in the future.
So there is no way they can run trials or introduce them gradually. Only way I can see that we will get autonomous trains is if they can just tell every train driver, guard and signalman to not come into work one day and the autonomous trains take over 100% on that day.
Isn’t the Docklands LR one? I recognise that all ‘workers’ want to retain their jobs: but what beginners most of us are by comparison with the real experts; Imagine a scenario where every dispute -many developed by the very persons who benefit most from doing so- creates work for five (5) sets of jumped-up clerks, masquerading as professionals.
As Ian says, there are autonomous trains in operation throughout the world but they are basically new and self-contained, such as metros and systems linking airport terminal buildings. The Docklands Light Railway is driverless but each train has a member of staff on board who can take control in emergency.
I was struck (apologies for the pun …) how many of the guards’ duties (as elaborated by this BBC article) DON’T require the presence of a second person on the train. I don’t drive off in my car with the doors open, because they’re fitted with limit switches and an alarm; IT systems, mobile phone apps etc. could deal with most information needs; ticketing checks via RFID seems do-able and we generally manage for the rest of the waking day NOT travelling by rail, without a personal health and safety assistant https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39255644
The obvious difference between cargo ships and trains is, of course, the latter carry human cargo. Passengers would prefer to have staff on board to whom they can turn for information or assistance in an emergency and it would be the same for ferries and other passenger ships.