[QUOTE=ombugge;181083]When all ships are autonomous there will not be a need to pick up people in distress. Until then there will still be SAR vessels and helicopters to do so. There will still be manned vessels around for the foreseeable future however.[/QUOTE]
All vessels will NEVER be autonomous.
[QUOTE=ombugge;181082]No alarm will go off in the C/Eng. cabin since there will not be any C/Eng. to get annoyed, or any cabins for that matter.
Any system alarm will be dealt with by shore based personnel, who will be able to check the status of the machinery, system or individual equipment to verify if it is a faulty sensor, or a serious problem. In the last case there will be 100% redundancy, just like on a DP3 vessel today.
If I haven’t said it before I will repeat it here: We are NOT talking about taking an existing vessel, with yesteryear’s technology and machinery and making it autonomous. We are talking about vessels designed, built, equipped and programmed to operate autonomously, but with someone sitting in a control centre somewhere who can, if necessary, take control remotely.[/QUOTE]
I don’t believe we are even close to technology that removes the need for an engineer to physically be there to verify alarms. How do you know if the sensor is reading correctly unless you can go verify its reading manually?