There is so much development going on with autonomous vehicles around the world, like Elon Musk saying that Tesla’s autonomous car will roll out coast to coast as soon as 2018. But what about the status of self-driving ships?
Well, Japan said we have to wait until 2025.
A couple of Japanese shipping firms, led by Misui OSK Lines and Nippon Yusen, have committed to plans of producing self-navigating cargo ships, which, in total, could cost to hundreds of million dollars. The two mentioned firms will head the autonomous ship technology and shoulder the costs.
The target is to have a fleet of 250 high-tech vessels by 2025.
Being self-driving, the ships will utilize artificial intelligence to navigate the seas. They should be able to take the safest, shortest and cheapest routes.
It will include a system which has elements of the Internet of Things, allowing devices to connect to the Internet to gather data like weather forecasts and others which are critical in the direction of the ship.
While the ships will be driving themselves to locations, the companies did not say whether or not there will still be crew to man other operations on the ships. But the AI is expected to monitor maintenance and predict malfunctions and other issues.
According to reports in Nikkei Asian Review, the implementation of fully autonomous shipping could halve the roughly 2,000 maritime accidents per year.
Not only that, by leading the automation technology in cargo ships, Japan is hoping that its share of market will grow to 30% from its current 20%.
Photo by Rolls Royce
Rolls Royce pushed the same idea of self-driving ships in June of 2016, but the company estimated it to roll out by 2020.
In its version of smart cargo ships, there will be a central ‘holodeck’ which controls the entire ferry, with 360-degree cameras for operations based in a virtual bridge to monitor the activities. And there will be no crews on board the ship.
Photo by Rolls Royce
Roll Royce’s vice president for marine innovation Oskar Levander said at that moment, “This is happening. It’s not if, it’s when.”
“The technologies needed to make remote and autonomous ships a reality exist. We will see a remote controlled ship in commercial use by the end of the decade,” he said.
Source: Dailymail UK
