# Whatever next?



## spongebob (Dec 11, 2007)

*Rolls-Royce is developing drone cargo ships*

By Jacob Kastrenakes on February 25, 2014 06:05 pm Email @jake_k 67*Comments*

Drones are already patrolling the skies, and eventually Rolls-Royce wants to see them take over the seas too. According to _Bloomberg_, Rolls-Royce Holdings is developing unmanned cargo ships that can be remotely controlled by captains using a virtual-reality recreation of a vessel's bridge. Development on the ships began last year, and it expects the unmanned ships to eventually offer a safer, cleaner, and less-expensive option for moving cargo.
"Technology is at the level where we can make this happen."
"Now the technology is at the level where we can make this happen, and society is moving in this direction," Oskar Levander, a marine engineering and technology executive at Rolls-Royce, tells _Bloomberg_. "If we want marine to do this, now is the time to move."
While now may be Rolls-Royce's time to start moving, it's far from the time when these ships will set sail. As _Bloomberg_ points out, there are quite a few regulatory and financial hurdles in the way of unmanned vessels, including international minimum crew requirements and an ineligibility for being insured by major providers. And, as when it comes to self-driving cars taking over the roads, there are already plenty of concerns about what could go wrong when humans are removed from the picture.
Levander acknowledges to _Bloomberg_ that it won't be a quick transition, and he makes it clear that Rolls-Royce Holdings — the aircraft and ship engineering firm now separate from the BMW-owned automaker — is instead trying to get ahead of the pack. Its vision is appealing: by removing the crew, the bridge, and other equipment needed to support good living conditions, ships would reportedly be 5 percent lighter and burn 12 percent to 15 percent less fuel. Supporting the crew reportedly accounts for around 44 percent of total operating expenses on a large container ship as well, so there could eventually be an obvious path to savings.
_Bloomberg_ reports that it could be a pricy path to get there though, as Rolls-Royce will have to develop new safety and backup equipment to handle potential machine failures. "It’s a given that the remote-controlled ship must be as safe as today," Levander tells _Bloomberg_. "But we actually think it can be even much safer than today." There's no word on how long development of the systems might take or what Rolls-Royce is doing to address its regulatory hurdles, but at least with self-driving cars, we've seen that lawmakers have been open to letting machine-controlled systems begin testing — so long as the right safety systems are in place.

*Source* Bloomberg
*Related Items* rolls-royce rolls-royce holdings unmanned vehicle ship cargo ship drone


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## stein (Nov 4, 2006)

And soon they’ll dispense with the shore bridge as well, and have the coming super ferries encircle the world on their own as programmed by some computer programmer. Saw a television do***entary on modern tramlines btw, and in some medium size French town they already had a fully automated system (free btw). One obvious problem to those who constructed it was assuring passengers entering and leaving did so safely: I remember those elevators that moved continually ("paternoster lifts"), which could be said to be fully automated, you had to jump in and out on each floor, and though it moved slowly it was scary, and nothing for the old ladies. The solution was simple, one set of doors on the platform of the tram station exactly outside where the tram doors stopped, and before the tram could close its doors and move, the station doors had to have been fully closed for some time. It might be that similar simple solutions can be found for all transport systems, ships entering leaving ports, or container terminals (?) on their own. 

The world is changing rapidly but the coming consequences of the information technology revolution may still be in thick fog. Up until now humans have been controlling the machines, but increasingly the machines will be controlling themselves, and that will probably change everything in some way, society, family life, work, school, whatever. I think we will see an escalating ideological war between those who welcome the future, and those who wants us to retreat from it, reverse back into the tunnel of history in some way. It might become the new right-left divide, the dynamist party versus the stasis one, each perhaps recruiting one half of their members from both conservatives and socialists? Well the romance of the sea is in any case gone. :sweat:


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## trotterdotpom (Apr 29, 2005)

If a rogue wave smashes a ship and nobody is there to hear it, does it still make a sickening crunching noise? Why don't they use ordinary ships but man them with Filipino robots? 

John T


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## billyboy (Jul 6, 2005)

Thought they already were JohnT. The little brown rice powered machines...LOL


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## billyboy (Jul 6, 2005)

? wonder if the Belgian trawlers will take steps to avoi these juggernauts in the Channel


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## Ern (Dec 4, 2013)

Oops. we have a devastating oil leak. A couple of members of the crew can fix that easily.
Ah, there is no crew. Never mind. Just carry on to the next harbour trailing oil, and dead sea life in its wake.


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## ART6 (Sep 14, 2010)

Before I retired I was designing and building biofuel plants containing heavy rotating machinery with up to 4 MW electrical running loads. The last two were fully automated, as they had to be because their process lines throughputs were too large for humans to react to changes in time. Each was operated by one man in a control room, who generally spent all day in total boredom, reading girly mags. The only time that he would have a role was if something happened that the automation couldn't handle. Then it would make the system safe and lean back saying "OK Guv, over to you!" Otherwise, there were strict limits on what he could do to intervene. It would have been perfectly possible to have a completely unmanned plant that would start up, shut down, and run through instructions from the client's head office over modems, although our clients rather balked at that.

They were right, and I advised them against taking automation (and cost saving) too far. In the absence of fully developed and proven artificial intelligence, the algorithms that control the process, the car, the ship, or the plane, are only so good as the programmers could imagine scenarios that might occur. Computers don't yet make judgements and they don't guess the outcome of their decisions. They simply respond to those outcomes. The plants that I designed were nothing as complex as a ship at sea because weather conditions etc. had nothing to do with it, yet even so we needed a human who could simply go and look.

I can understand how a drone flying over Afghanistan, controlled by a technician in Houston, can send a missile up the backside of a terrorist, because if it crashes it is no big deal (other than for anyone underneath it at the time!). However, something like a big tanker with thousands of tonnes of crude oil aboard, or a box boat with thousands of containers is another ball game entirely. What happens when the operating system returns a message "This application has carried out an illegal operation and must close. Press any key to continue." Who is going to go and look? 

Having said that, the Costa Concordia grounding doesn't say much for human control either!


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## Ern (Dec 4, 2013)

Art6
My point exactly.just said with more knowledge, experience and eloquence.


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## stein (Nov 4, 2006)

Automation has continually improved - humans perhaps not?

According to insurers’ statistics, 80% of oil tanker accidents which cause oil spills at sea are a result of human errors: badly handled manoeuvres, neglected maintenance, insufficient checking of systems, lack of communication between crew members, fatigue, or an inadequate response to a minor incident causing it to escalate into a major accident. From a more practical point of view, analysis of the cir***stances surrounding accidents demonstrates the high proportion of spills due to groundings and collisions. Collisions are generally due to manoeuvring errors, especially in poor visibility and/or busy shipping traffic areas. Groundings are also often a result of manoeuvring errors, often made worse by high winds, challenging currents and bad weather.

http://www.black-tides.com/uk/source/oil-tanker-accidents/causes-accidents.php


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## Barrie Youde (May 29, 2006)

Moorings?

Heaving lines?

Bitts?

Tides?


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## alaric (Feb 27, 2012)

An example of built in redundancy?
See Drone thread on the Bridge and Mess Deck's Begining of the end.


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## stein (Nov 4, 2006)

Barrie Youde said:


> Moorings?
> 
> Heaving lines?
> 
> ...


I’ve seen machines taking freshly fished fish and reduce them to bone free filets in boxes ready for sale, I’ve seen machines picking grapes and cotton with no spillage, and I’ve seen one man staring at some screens running a paper mill alone, timber in – rolls of paper out. And this machine I’m now using is so far beyond my understanding it’s – well something of great magnitude. Fastening a ship to a wharf in some way, even with tides doesn’t seem like that much of a problem?


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## Satanic Mechanic (Feb 23, 2009)

While it might be a wee bit off the future it's in the post that's for sure. An aeroplane pilot can essentially push a button and the plane will take off cruise and land itself, so make no mistake that the tech is there


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