Rolls-Royce believes time of drone cargo ships has come

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Category: Marina Mercante

Published on Wednesday, 01 October 2014 03:21

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Marine innovation engineering department at Rolls-Royce has presented a draft design of an ocean-going robo-vessel that could enter service within a decade. Experts remain highly skeptical that computers could replace human instincts anytime soon.

  Rolls-Royce (RR/) Holdings Plc, which started designing  autonomous cargo vessels in 2013, have presented in Bloomberg  original computer design of crewless cargo ships. The vessels  have a distinct difference from all modern ships: they lack any  deck housing whatsoever.

"The idea of a remote-controlled ship is not new, it has been  around for decades, but the difference is the technology now  exists,” announced Oskar Levander, head of marine innovation  engineering at Rolls-Royce, in an interview to the Financial  Times last December.

  The explosion in development of drones operating in all  environments predetermines that robotic vehicles and vessels are  going to revolutionize transportation worldwide. And for the  world’s $375 billion shipping industry currently delivering 90  percent of world trade, that is going to be a hell of a  challenge.

  The bright outlook of saving money in commercial navigation by  introducing robotic vessels keeps haunting British engineers, who  want to stake a claim on being among the pioneers of drone cargo  ships.

  Rolls-Royce specialists realize that at the moment international  regulators are not ready to embrace the idea of civil sea drones,  but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so  they are initiating public debate on the issue. The company is  now pushing for organizing legal arrangements for the huge  undertaking because without agreed international regulations on  drone seafaring in place all talks about creating robotic fleet  are useless: the absence of legal market would be a barrier to  demand.

“There is no point us developing remote-controlled ships if  there isn’t a market to sell them into,” said Levander,  Rolls-Royce’s vice-president of innovation in marine engineering  and technology, to Bloomberg. “We can make it happen faster  technologically than we can on the regulatory side.”

“Now the technology is at the level where we can make this  happen, and society is moving in this direction,” Levander  said. “If we want marine to do this, now is the time to  move.”

A practical step towards robotic maritime future is going to be  made on local sea routes in the EU and the US, where lanes in  coastal waters are operating under one jurisdiction, he predicts.

“I think it will take more than 10 years before you have all  the global rules in place, but you may have a local  administration that is prepared to run [robotic ships]  sooner,” said Levander.

  With the drone frenzy that engulfed America’s military and even  internet merchandise, with Google buying robot producers and  Amazon announcing drone deliveries within five years’ time  unmanned maritime is inevitable, Levander believes.

“It is happening in all the other industries so it is only  logical that it should happen in marine,” he said.

  With computers generally increasing their roles in navigation and  operations, the transition to drone ships will happen gradually,  assured Levander. Container and dry-bulk carrier ships are likely  to get rid of crews first, while hazardous materials such as  flammable oil and liquefied natural gas will demand manned  steering, because of the “perception that having people on  board is safer,” he said. With time, remote-controlled ships  will become even safer to operate than manned ones today, assured  the Rolls-Royce expert.

  The EU is currently funding 3.5-million-euro Maritime Unmanned  Navigation through Intelligence in Networks project (MUNIN),  similar to that of a plane’s autopilot, when one crew sets a  course for vessel and leaves the ship, whereas another crew meets  the vessel overseas close to the destination port and sails it to  the pier.

  Drone skeptics

  The economies of the robotic cargo vessels are obvious: no crew  costs (average $3,299 a day, or about 44 percent of total  operating expenses for a large freighter, according to Moore  Stephens LLP, quoted by Bloomberg), no life-support system  expenses, more space for cargo in absence of a bridge, control  cabin and staterooms. Apart from giving additional space for  cargo, such ships would use 15 percent less fuel, according to  Bloomberg.

  But potential investment needed to make ships steer themselves to  destination might be high enough to consider the idea financially  unattractive.

“I don’t think personally that there’s a huge cost-benefit in  unmanned ships today, but technologically it’s possible,”said Tor Svensen, chief executive officer of maritime for DNV GL,  the largest company certifying vessels for safety standards, in  early February. “My prediction is that it’s not coming in the  foreseeable future.”

The UK-based International Association of Classification  Societies so far hasn’t developed unified rules for unmanned  vessels operation.

“Can you imagine what it would be like with an unmanned  vessel with cargo on board trading on the open seas? You get in  enough trouble with crew on board,” the organization’s  secretary Derek Hodgson told Bloomberg in early January.  “There are an enormous number of hoops for it to go through  before it even got onto the drawing board.”

The London-based International Chamber of Shipping confirmed that  drone ships are illegal under current international conventions.  The chamber, representing over 80 percent of the global fleet,  does not considering the issue serious at this point, shared  spokesman Simon Bennett earlier in February.

“I’m not very much of a fan and think this is a long way  off,” said Peter Hinchliffe, secretary-general of the  International Chamber of Shipping.

  The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN agency that  has overseen global shipping for almost 70 years, so far hasn’t  received any proposals on unmanned or remote-controlled ships,  spokeswoman Natasha Brown confirmed in an email. The IMO’s  regulations apply to any vessel exceeding 500 gross tons,  battleships and fishing boats excluded.

  Without complying with IMO regulations, no robotic ships would be  considered seaworthy and eligible for insurance, stressed Andrew  Bardot, secretary and executive officer of the London-based  International Group of P&I Clubs, representing 90 percent of  the world fleet.

  Besides legal obstacles, there is a human factor as well as there  are well over a million seafarers worldwide.

  The International Transport Workers’ Federation, representing  about 600,000 world’s skilled maritime specialists strictly  oppose the innovation, warning of the “dangers posed to the  environment by unmanned vessels.”

“It cannot and will never replace the eyes, ears and thought  processes of professional seafarers,” maintained Dave  Heindel, chairman of the ITF’s seafarers’ section in London, in  an emailed statement.

  While Rolls-Royce maintains that unmanned ships are going to be  more resistant to pirate attacks because there will be “no  crew to take hostage,” others believe the drone ships will  see piracy flourish, because any remotely-controlled mechanism  could be hijacked or manipulated, just like the American spy  drone RQ-170 Sentinel safely grounded by Iranian military in 2011.

“Take the crews off a ship, and I will become a pirate,”wrote user rubadubdoobie in comments on the Bloomberg website.

“There are billions of dollars aboard nearly all of these  ships. An unguarded ship, few security measures, billions of  dollars as a sitting duck.... only a fool would NOT become a  pirate, if there was literally no one to stop you or even ID  you,” wrote rubadubdoobie, adding that “These ships  would be an unguarded ATM sitting in the middle of the  ocean.”