The master of the Svitzer Hermod berthed his vessel alongside a quay in Copenhagen. Then he undocked, turned 360 degrees, and piloted a few kilometres along the water, before turning around and docking where he started. A rather pointless series of manoeuvres you might think 鈥� except that he wasn鈥檛 aboard the ship.
This demonstration in 2017 was of the world鈥檚 first remotely operated ship, a joint project between Rolls-Royce and Svitzer, a firm that operates tugs. Remote-controlled and fully autonomous ships are the talk of the industry, partly because reducing the number of crew is one way to avoid loss of life during accidents. It might also avert those accidents, because , according to insurance firm Allianz.
Rolls-Royce thinks remote-control ships will plough the oceans by 2030 and autonomous ones by 2035. The first autonomous ships will probably operate in local waters. For example, chemical firm Yara has announced that it will build an electric ship to autonomously between two ports about 50 kilometres apart in southern Norway by 2020.
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But Rolls-Royce is aiming for the open ocean. Funded to the tune of 鈧�6.6 million by the Finnish government, its is developing a range of sensors for ships, better communication links with land, and algorithms that can interpret information from the sensors and combine them with rules and regulations of the sea. This would allow the ship to react in the expected way if it is on a collision course, for example.
Although uncrewed ships might make shipping safer in some ways, they may introduce fresh problems. Take cybersecurity, which is already a thorn in the side of the shipping industry. In April 2016, some 70 vessels that had departed Seoul harbour returned to the port citing problems with their GPS systems; South Korea said it had detected jamming signals sent from North Korea. If this were to happen to an uncrewed ship, it would be left highly vulnerable.
Some countries, including South Korea and the US, are considering installing a backup system called eLORAN, or enhanced long range navigation system. This involves a global network of radio posts broadcasting signals that ships can use to triangulate their position. These signals can be , so would be much harder to spoof.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淕host ship鈥�
