Marine Autonomous Systems (MAS) Introduction
The era of autonomy is upon us, driverless cars, airborne drones, and unmanned space probes. Automation and Cyber enablement is impacting our daily lives.
In the military sector Navies want to place fewer personnel in harm’s way and the ultimate mitigation for this risk is to remove the person from the ship completely, whereby unmanned autonomous ships offer the potential to transform the way that many activities are conducted at sea. However, just as driverless cars have raised safety concerns the prospect of building fully autonomous ships comes with challenges.
Because an autonomous ship consists of multiple, interconnected systems, developed in a rapidly changing environment, assuring that an autonomous ship will be safe cannot be a prescriptive activity relying on knowledge gained from traditional systems. Instead, a systems approach is to be taken accommodating all the different systems to achieve successful operation [1].
The risks to and from the ship, its systems, its people working remotely, and its operating philosophy are to be identified. These risks then need to be mitigated so that the level of risk is acceptable when compared to the risks presented by a conventional ship. The systems that are critical to safe operations, are to be sufficiently resilient and gracefully degrade in the event of a failure occurring. These systems may be identified using a risk‐based process, such as Lloyds Register’s Risk Based Design process or a similar framework. The effects of failures or damages at all levels need to be analysed, in order to understand the effects on the system as a whole to determine the necessary mitigations.
There are a number of aspects which need to be considered. These include sensors and software, network and communications, data assurance, system security and human‐system considerations.
Sensors and Software
The sensor parameters are to be agreed by the stakeholders with the signal processing matching the sensor. Components are to be
Generic Process for Risk Based Designs [2] 1
START STATEMENT
DESIGN & SAFETY
2 ASSESSMENT RISK
CRITERIA SATISFIED
YES 28 Society of Maritime Industries Handbook & Members’ Directory 2017 NO
DATA INTEGRITY is the property that defines whether data is correct at all stages of the production, communication, storage and retrieval of the data.
located with appropriate segregation so that the effects of mechanical damage or electromagnetic interference is minimised with duplicated data communication links being routed to provide maximum physical separation with all components being suitable for the intended marine environment.
When assessing the criticality at the sub‐system level, consideration needs to be given to the physical and functional redundancies. Threats to the total system may arise from a lack of adequate control, or understanding of, the component supply chain.
Good engineering processes define the documentation that is required to produce software and communicate the requirements to the software product’s stakeholders. A key requirement of the software assurance process is to determine how the failure of the software could credibly affect the system hazards. This demands communication with the system‐level stakeholders to ensure the analysis takes account of the context of all software.
Networks and Communications
The derivation of communication requirements is to be an integral part of the system engineering process to ensure all users are provided with a communications infrastructure with the capacity to handle the required traffic plus a margin for expansion and overload. Other considerations include resilience to failures and damages, security protection for the data carried, resistance to unauthorised and unintended usage, appropriate network management systems, Feedback to provide resilience to malicious attacks and adequate bandwidth to ensure that the data properties are preserved to maintain safe operation.
Data Assurance
The aspects of data assurance that require consideration for autonomous ships include integrity, availability, authentication, confidentiality, authorisation, ownership and storage.
3
REVISION & SUPPORTING STUDIES
4
FINAL DESIGN ASSESSMENT
END
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