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50 Insight | USVs “But there’s a lot of potential to cause conflicts when sailing through international waters that have a lot of different stakeholders, so it’s easiest to sail your vessel through territorial waters and within your own waters, because exemptions or bilateral deals can be made – or multilateral deals if necessary.” The company sees future autonomous shipping fleets being overseen from a network of onshore control centres, with the shipping masters and engineers monitoring, supervising and occasionally assisting or intervening in exceptional circumstances. Depending on the nature of operations, that may mean five to ten ships per centre. “Essentially we’re developing an ‘autonomy brain’ with 360 º awareness to replace the crew on board,” Due says. “Sensor technology and fused sensor data are key to achieving the required level of safe navigation.” The list of necessary sensors for container ships is somewhat longer than that for other vessels, given the commercial and civil considerations and the size of the vessels themselves. They include sonar for imaging in the water under and ahead of the ship, radar for surface information relevant to the sea chart and waypoints, an AIS transponder data overlay for coordination with other ships, and Lidar and other sensors around the vessel for collision avoidance. Further overlays with optical sensors and other reference systems may also be added, allowing greater perspective and faster reaction than human operators, and greater capability in stormy or foggy conditions. Due says logistics firms and manufacturers are looking at autonomous ships with growing interest, as they see them as a timely alternative to transporting goods along the congested sea lanes of northern Europe. Also, the Yara Birkeland is being designed as an all-electric USV, so it will have fewer moving parts and lower maintenance costs than fuel-powered systems. That’s a factor that is not lost on shipping companies around the world, who are interested mainly in the financial sustainability that unmanned systems could bring. Kongsberg is also researching autonomy in other areas of its business to inform its unmanned systems architectures. “We demonstrated the Odin USV last year, for mine countermeasures and mapping, the autonomy brain for which was developed in partnership with the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment,” Due says. “And the Sea-Kit USV operates for 100 days at sea using our K-Mate autonomy architecture, acting as mothership for our Hugin AUV, which docks to upload data and to recharge.” In addition to autonomous sailing and navigation, for unmanned shipping to become a reality, intelligence must also be applied to the other subsystems. Software must enable USVs to self-manage their batteries and power systems in real time, as well as tracking the health of other onboard systems, in order to eliminate the need for onboard engineers. Rolls-Royce has developed a range of technologies to that end, with its Energy Management and Equipment Health Management systems. It is also a partner in the Zero Emission Ferry project to research new ways of fully electrifying ship power systems. “For truly remote and autonomous shipping, there needs to be a blend of systems to make the ships as efficient as possible, together with navigational and control capability,” says Karno Tenuovo, senior vice-president of ship intelligence at Rolls-Royce. “We think they’re of equal importance, and actually will ultimately become part of the same system.” As he explains, fuel can account for up to 50% of operating costs, so vessel operators increasingly want to be able June/July 2018 | Unmanned Systems Technology The autonomous container vessel ‘Yara Birkeland’ is slated to begin full autonomy trials in 2020 (Courtesy of Kongsberg) AIS, radar and a host of other sensors are crucial for autonomous shipping (Courtesy of Rolls-Royce)