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18 In conversation | Richard Hardiman branches, fridges, car tyres, and these can be sucked into tug propellers. It’s a real commercial problem. “The Waste Shark is really good for canal areas and basins, but for a flood situation we are building the Great Waste Shark with a 2.2 m wide by 1 m deep mouth, so the idea is it should be able to take in a human body. If it can do that we can have a good go at a fridge,” he says. The waste can be automatically unloaded while the craft is recharging, again fully automatically. “We have developed a system to take the drone out of the water, empty it out and charge it back up at the same time,” he says. “If we can unload a container ship with robotics and guide large vessels at sea with autopilots, for us that is a starting point; my strategy is about how to operate autonomously in a port. It isn’t difficult to make things go from A to B – the software is freely available for that – but when you are operating a rule-based system against a captain it’s not so easy to navigate, so that’s our problem. “I think in the long term the technology we are developing will feed into that vision. On a grander scale we will partner with shipbuilders, but we have three or four iterations in the next 24 months, and each one is a bit bigger and more able to navigate autonomously.” These larger craft will be able to travel further out from a port. “We can send back data on air and water temperatures, and we can add to our sensors as we go, and we are thinking of an expedition model with sensors to measure the changing depth of the water for ports. “We also have a side project to get rid of algae in lakes. Algae starves a lake of oxygen, and we use oxygen and nitrogen sensors to monitor the water and UV light to tackle the algae; that’s worked fairly well. If you know you have five or six days of hot weather coming up then you would send these craft out to prepare to stop an algal bloom from developing.” The Waste Shark platform can be developed in different ways, Hardiman says. “For example, we have a concept for tackling piracy, where we’ve been experimenting with hydrofoils to lift the craft out the water to move it quickly to another area and use it to chase a pirate boat, as well as experimenting with ways to use it to disable the boat.” The Waste Shark is just the first step towards fully autonomous craft operating in ports, canals and rivers around the world, says Hardiman, and the technology lessons from Rotterdam will roll out in many different ways. December/January 2017 | Unmanned Systems Technology Rotterdam is one of the few ports in the world that makes a profit, and its aim is to make it the most innovative port in the world, says Richard Hardiman, CEO and founder of RanMarine Technology. It has therefore launched a technology incubator, called Port XL, and whittled 100 ideas down to 12, including the Waste Shark, for further development. “We moved here for three months and met a company that does rapid prototyping, and took the idea of the Waste Shark closer to a commercial look and feel with better tech and better hull designs,” Hardiman says. The Waste Shark has two types of collision avoidance – 2D Lidar and ultrasound sensors from a car, with a range of 10-15 m. “The stopping distance is quite short as the thrusters are more powerful than we actually need, so it will stop and go in another direction depending on the movement of the target and the maritime rules,” he says. “We put AIS identification transponders on the craft so that larger ships can see us. We don’t have to do that, given the size of the craft, but the problem is the regulations say that if you have AIS then you have to have a captain on board – and this regulation is the single biggest problem we face in developing an autonomous craft.” A lot of the wireless control comes through 3G cellular connections, which gives RanMarine wider coverage across the port area. “My original idea was to create our own wireless data network throughout the harbour, but the port of Rotterdam is almost 50 km long so 3G works well,” Hardiman says. The next stage is to add a 360 º camera to feed video back to the control room. Rotterdam’s technology incubator One side project is to use the Waste Shark to get rid of algae in lakes