Digital transformation could dramatically transform the traditional roles of crew members on ships as machines manage traditional navigational operations onboard, says an article published in the TechRepublic.
Cuyahoga River
The autonomous shipping solutions provider Wärtsilä Voyage, described its retrofit of the American Courage, a 194-meter bulk freighter that operates along the Cuyahoga River as the largest ship ever to perform automatic dock-to-dock operation.
Navigating this narrow stretch of the Cuyahoga comes with no shortage of spatial or logistical challenges whether its a human at the helm or an autonomous ship. Unlike the open water, which offers plenty of room for error, the fault-tolerance on this riverway is extremely low.
Beyond the slim peripheral margins, the Cuyahoga also bisects the city of Cleveland and hosts both commercial and recreational crafts of varying sizes.
American Courage’s navigation through Cuyahoga
To automate the operations and sense its environment, the American Courage uses a ship-based positioning system rather than a shore-based system. While GPS may be sufficient for car navigation there are pitfalls to consider.
GPS systems are not highly accurate and can be readily jammed with dirt cheap off-the-shelf components. To shore up these risks, the American Courage touts a secondary positioning solution similar to the LiDAR systems used in the autonomous driving industry, albeit more rugged and with extended range.
It scans the river banks, the scenery, creates a map of that and then it can navigate within that map so it is reliant on nothing which is outside your control.
Humans still aboard as full Autonomous shipping is prohibited
There’s regulatory red tape to bear in mind with autonomous navigation whether on land or sea. As it is with driverless vehicles, he said, fully autonomous shipping is not permitted at the moment and doesn’t anticipate this changing tomorrow.
There are still humans in the loop aboard the American Courage to intervene in the event of an emergency, but the nature of the traditional oversight role has evolved markedly.
Hendrik Bußhoff, a product manager at Wärtsilä Voyage says, ”It’s more shifted from a do everything yourself function to a monitor the task execution function. But the human at no point is leaving the operation completely alone.”
The ship has a manual override, which is a really big mechanical switch, and, in the event of an emergency, a human onboard can break physical copper wires, reconnect a physical copper wire to regain complete “manual control as it used to be in the old days.”
Generational shortage and shifting priorities
Whether these autonomous shipping solutions will impact employment quality or totals remains to be seen, however, there are industry supply and demand considerations at play.
Bußhoff says, there’s a generation of seafarers following, which is, first of all, not that big. “You may run into a simple manpower shortage”.
“Moreover, the current generation may not be a group that wants to invest 30 years in mastering a skill and then doing it for 10 years,” he said.
With experienced human knowledge exiting the industry and dwindling employees entering, these autonomous solutions could address both sides of the equation.
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Source: TechRepublic
