Future of ships

If there are a glut of over-optimistic articles about autonomous ships of vthe future there is no shortage of the opposite either. Here is a recent one:


I don’t think autonomous ships will enter and leave ports in fully autonomous mode, nor are they likely to be allowed to, especially in congested ports like Rotterdam.
They will be remotely operated by “Pilots” sitting ashore, who are able to “see” and talk to other vessels and other “Pilots” just like today.

I think he meant that engine maintenence is not constant like navigation or steering, so the engineers would have a lot of down time.

A Norwegian company plans to introduce autonomous ferries in 2018. And Rolls Royce and other shipbuilding companies are designing concepts and writing white papers that envision the future of autonomous ships. The potential for these boats is high, and the potential uses varied. What will they look like.

Another test zone for autonomous vessels have been approved by the Coastal Authorities in Norway:

This zone is close to the Simrad/Kongsberg facilities and the area where the Yara Birkeland will operate in a couple of years.

The first zone to be approved is in Trondheimsfjorden, close to SINTEF, MARINETEK and the main NTNU Campus.

The second zone was established in Storfjorden, near Aalesund and Norwegian Maritime Competence Centre (NMK) and NTNU’s Campus Aalesund.
Rolls-Royce Marine, Inmarsat and several others involved in the development of ships and marine technology are situated in NMK.
This is also where most of the shipyards that will be building the early autonomous ships and ferries are located.

China’s first “Smart Ship” is already learning how to become autonomous, at least as far as navigation is concerned:


Will it learn faster and better than newly minted Navigation Officers and replace them anytime soon??
Only time will tell.

Wartsila is facing up to the reality of smarter future ships and shipping:


Are you???

You have all read the stories about how hackers can take over the navigation or cargo planning systems of container ships and either send them aground or capsize them?
Well, Splash 24/7 have done some research into these reports:

Some of the heavy weights in shipping is getting into the game:

https://worldmaritimenews.com/archives/238869/nightmare-scenario-ship-critical-systems-easy-target-for-hackers/.

I don’t know if fake or not.

Very difficult to assess this without knowing more. But it looks like the tests were run against either a lab setup or a ship in port. It’s hard to figure out from the story just what the attack vector was, but they appeared to have exploited a weak over-the-air ECDIS update “feature” for the chart business. If that was the case it speaks very badly for the unnamed vendor.

The description of the radar spoofing appears to be a further exploitation of the ECDIS flaw, in that they imply they were not only able to manipulate chart data but also install malware which propagated further into the system.

The engine room stuff was the old thumb drive/USB stick trick. Having an unsecured USB port on a shipboard computer is a very, very bad idea.

Everything that was demonstrated was we used to call “exploits” or more informally “gotchas:” a demonstration of a flaw with a lot of “coulda shoulda woulda” surrounding it. The question is whether that could be an element of a meaningful attack. It’s like demonstrating that you can smuggle a knife through airport security. OK, so now you’ve got a knife on an airplane. Now what?

As the Splash article noted, the one thing standing in the way of these exploits becoming attacks is an alert crew. If the crew is captive to their sensors and fail to respond to other cues (like looking out the window) then you’re in trouble. And, of course, if the ship is unmanned, being captive to the sensors is a feature, not a bug :frowning:

Cheers,

Earl

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You hit the nail on the head. And that “feature” it is a large and moving hurdle.

For a short trip I would have thought even easier and done sooner if clear of other shipping or the vessel gets a blind navigation waiver ( everybody gives way), auto approach systems already exist, its just if you want it to avoid things without human intervention or will a pilot have control from the shore?

Navigation and collision avoidance on long ocean crossings can already be automated and to a large degree already are on some ships, but it is still required to have an OOW at all times and a lookout at night and in bad visibility.

When an autonomous ship gets close to a port, or in congested fairways, like the English Channel , Malacca Strait etc. the remote oversight and control is increased to ensure fast action in case anything goes wrong, like that any manned vessel or wafi that do not follow the rules create a dangerous situation.

Whether individual countries or ports will insist on that function being transferred to a local Control Centre, or still handled from the other side of the world, is left to be seen. (Very likely it will end up with a bit of both)

The need for a pilot physically on board to do the task of guiding and order maneuver actions etc., is VERY unlikely, since there will not be any facilities to accommodate such a function. (No "bridge, nobody to rig a pilot ladder and no hot coffee)

Kotug is already thinking safety:


What say you assist tug members to this idea??
Could it ever be implemented on US tugs, or be shot down by Unions and/or Maritime and Port Authorities??

From Tradewinds

"Time may be right to look again at nuclear-powered boxships
Environmental pressure to reduce emissions could pave the way for faster containerships to replace mega-vessels where cargo values are high, report argues
December 21st, 2017 17:00 GMT
by Paul Berrill

Pressure to slash emissions has led Norwegian researchers to re-examine the feasibility of nuclear-powered merchant ships.

High building and decommissioning costs, plus issues of political and social acceptance, remain major obstacles, according to Halvor Schoyen, associate professor of maritime logistics at the University College of Southeast Norway — but there could be niche roles for high-speed vessels carrying high-value cargoes.

Schoyen and co-author Kenn Steger-Jensen of Aalborg University in Denmark point to the possibility of a slow-steaming 20,000-teu Triple-E containership being replaced by a 35-knot, 270-megawatt nuclear boxship with a capacity of 9,200 teu.

But the limitations are still huge, as they point out in a research article, “Nuclear propulsion in ocean merchant shipping: The role of historical experiments to gain insight into possible future applications”, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

Four experimental ships were built in the 1960s to 1980s, when it was estimated the upfront cost for a commercial ship’s nuclear propulsion plant was seven times that of an oil-fired engine of equivalent horsepower — and this would double or triple the overall price.

A cost increase of two to 2.5 times was estimated by class society DNV in 2010, which added that price calculations remained “highly uncertain”.

Maintenance, repair, manning, insurance and security costs are also likely to be higher for a nuclear vessel, the report says, but fuel costs could be lower.

NUCLEAR SHIPS
The Savannah travelled 450,000 nautical miles in 10 years on nuclear power, with one refuelling, before ending service. It is currently in Baltimore, where it is set to be converted into a museum.
The Otto Hahn sailed 650,000 miles in nine years on nuclear power, using two fuel cores. Each refuelling took about 10 weeks. Its reactor was decommissioned in 1979 and the ship scrapped in 2009.
The Mutsu’s total project cost was put at $1.2bn after the reactor was decommissioned in 1995. Converted into an ocean-observation ship with a diesel engine, it is still in service as the Mirai.
The Sevmorput and its reactor are reported to have operated for more than 20 years without major incidents, although the ship was laid up for a decade in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
However, uncertainty about refuelling intervals and time taken out of service, plus the high cost of decommissioning, are problematic for any owner other than a national government.

The first three maritime nuclear vessels — the US Maritime Administration’s passenger-freight ship Savannah (built 1961), West German state company GKSS’ Otto Hahn (built 1964) and the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute’s Mutsu (built 1970) — were unable to carry containers.

“These three experimental nuclear ships failed to prosper commercially with respect to freight service, due to high ship-operating expenses and unsuitable mission selection linked to routes and cargoes,” the report says.

The fourth vessel, the USSR’s Sevmorput (built 1986), was constructed for commercial operations in remote Arctic waters.

All four encountered political opposition, with the Savannah barred from ports in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, the Otto Hahn denied passage through the Suez Canal and Dutch ports, and the Mutsu even excluded from its home port after its reactor started to leak fast neutrons on its maiden voyage in 1974.

But the issue of emissions opens up possibilities.

About 886 containerships above 5,000 teu, on average, are slow-steaming at 17.2 knots, emitting about 81.7 million tonnes of CO2 per year, or 40% of the global annual boxship output. The report argues: “Nuclear-powered high speeds and smaller ship size could possibly serve shippers’ demands in a market niche for fast-moving, high-value cargo ocean transport service.”

Noted without comment:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.09665.pdf

Cheers,

Earl

Ouch! Let the leapfrogging begin.

So… don’t put a sticker of a tie-dyed toaster on the side of a ship or a Norwegian autonomous ferry might think it’s a banana?

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Unless it’s in your financial or political interest to make an autonomous ferry think the ship – or more likely a reef – is a banana :wink:

The interesting part of the paper was how easy it was.

Cheers,

Earl

Why would anybody put such stickers on their ship?
If it is to confuse any autonomous vessels in the vicinity to believe your ship is a banana, good luck.
I believe autonomous ships will be programed not to ram anything, including bananas.
If they are not, why would you want to get rammed?