maintenance, handle cargo, supervise and monitor tasks, and gauge risks. These roles must be carefully specified. Until any ship with a high level of autonomy has been fully tested, at least one human should retain command and control. They might be on board, like an airline pilot, or remote, like a drone operator. As systems improve, human supervision might be required only in emergencies.
Researchers need to design human– machine interfaces to support decision-making for navigation, remote control and interactions with people on other ships and at ports. Remote-control centres will look and feel like those used to direct air traffic. A few centres are already in place, including those running the Zhi Fei, Yara Birkeland and Seafar vessels.
More analysis is needed of how humans and AI interact, including how best to relay performance or navigation information to and from remote operators. Methods need to be designed for verifying automated detections by sensors of small boats and other hazards. And more needs to be learnt about how people understand and anticipate the manoeuvres of other ships to avoid collisions in busy waters. Humans might need to check that the calculated risks of voyages are acceptable in light of weather forecasts and other uncertainties.
ASSURE SAFETY AND SECURITY
As in the automotive sector, development of maritime technologies must have safety at the centre. Preliminary guidelines for using automated processes for navigation and systems maintenance have been published by classification societies such as DNV in Norway and the French firm Bureau Veritas (see
go.nature.com/43kxqte and
go.nature.com/43me6e7). These guidelines cover processes for
qualification of concepts and technologies, and how systems supporting the autonomous and remote operation of vessels should be designed. But they lack specifics about how they should be applied, for example, in poor visibility, during storms or in sea ice.
Ships have a lot of moving parts (engines, generators, propellers, cranes and hatches) that require observation and maintenance by humans for safe operation. Researchers need to develop smart maintenance procedures, which monitor components and identify, diagnose and repair faults remotely. More redundancy in systems, with spare components available to take over when one has failed, would increase resilience.
Current guidelines also say little about cybersecurity risks, which will increase in the context of autonomous ships. In the past few years, cyberattacks on major shipping companies — such as the Danish firm Maersk in 2017 and on South Korea’s HMM and Japan’s K Line in 2021 — have damaged assets and finances. Maersk was forced to rebuild its IT infrastructure in 10 days and sustained losses of more than $300 million, as well as reputational damage. Fleets came to a standstill, blocking ports and delaying cargoes.
To extend the guidelines, researchers should define safety and security requirements for autonomous ship technologies in a range of operational contexts. For example, how should human–machine interfaces be assured to work when a ship is rolling on heavy seas? How should uncertainties in navigation be handled when operating in currents, winds and tides? Sensors need to distinguish different types of sea ice and feed that back to ship systems to find the safest route. Measures for preventing and responding to cyberattacks need to be developed. Infrastructure such as buoys,
antennas and IT systems at sea and ashore need to be secure, and data links between ships and control centres reliable. The bandwidth of wireless communication systems is influenced by environmental and weather conditions. Digital twins (computer-based copies of large systems) are helpful for monitoring, verifying and validating functional and safety requirements for autonomous ships through simulation. Current models accurately replicate ship navigation by combining data on water depths, sea-bed composition, tidal heights and water visibility, as well as land and weather data.
RETHINK PORTS
Autonomy does not demand radical changes to ship design, although advances will be needed to accommodate equipment to support autonomous operation and the parallel development of cleaner propulsion systems.
It is a different matter for ports, where the advent of autonomous ships will accelerate trends towards fuller automation. The current focus is on automating cargo handling — in 2020, more than 800 million containers were moved around the world by human-operated cranes and vehicles. For example, in the port of Rotterdam, unmanned cranes and ‘automated guided vehicles’ allow an entire container terminal to be operated by 10–15 people each day. Robotic mooring and crane systems are in use in Stockholm, Tallinn and in the Finnish ports of Naantali and Helsinki. Singapore is constructing the world’s largest autonomous terminal at a cost of around US$15 billion, which is expected to be completed in 2040.
Autonomous ships will require more services, including automated pilotage and tug assistance, arrival management and berth allocation.
68 | The Report • June 2023 • Issue 104
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144
