Global race to develop self-navigating ships leaves U.S. behind
Global race to develop self-navigating ships leaves U.S.
behind
BY TIM JOHNSON April 23, 2018 05:00 AM Updated April 23,
2018 10:58 AM
World's first autonomous, zero-emission 'ghost ship'
The Norwegian drone vessel, christened YARA Birkeland,
will be the world’s first autonomous ship. Once it enters autonomous operation,
toting up to 120 20-foot containers per journey, it will pull congestion off
Norwegian highways. Kongsberg
WASHINGTON - The day in which unmanned “ghost ships” ply
the seas laden with cargo is fast approaching. But don’t expect the drone
vessels to be flying a U.S. flag.
The United States is not among the global hotspots where
a revolution in autonomous commercial shipping is unfolding. One needs to look
to places like Norway, Finland, Singapore and China to observe the competition
for unmanned shipping.
A shipyard in Norway will soon begin building a 237-foot
battery-powered electric container ship that will operate with nary a sailor aboard
by 2020.
Announcement of that project and several others over the
past year have rippled through maritime circles worldwide.
Finland is looking at prototypes for an autonomous ferry.
China has set aside a 225-square-mile ocean area to test crewless ships. And
Japanese shipping lines have formed a consortium with the goal of having 250
remote-control cargo ships by 2025.
“It’s kind of a space race,” said Sean T. Pribyl, a
maritime attorney with the Washington firm Blank Rome. “It was a total surprise
for everyone in the industry.”
U.S. shipping firms are not even in the game.
“We, the U.S., are behind,” said Deputy Administrator
Richard Balzano of the U.S. Maritime Administration, the arm of the
Transportation department that deals with shipping. American commercial
shipping firms are “on life support.”
“Our fleets are aging out. We’re not globally competitive
like, say, the Chinese. Our tax systems, our standards of living, our pay
rates, our union labor costs, these things all drive us to be less than
competitive,” Balzano said.
Battered by foreign competition, U.S. shipping lines run
a total of 81 ocean-going vessels that conduct international trade, the lowest
number in modern times, Balzano said.
Other factors that have hindered the commercial shipping
industry’s move toward autonomy include a lack of designated open-water areas
to conduct testing, sea lanes that are heavily transited, and regulatory
obstacles.
The U.S. isn’t losing the race because a lack of
technological know-how. In fact, U.S. technology in autonomous systems is world
beating – but it’s largely confined to the military. Earlier this year, the
Navy took control of a 132-foot sensor-rich unmanned vessel, dubbed Sea Hunter,
that can remain away from port for months at a time. Other anti-submarine robot
ships are on order.
Pribyl estimated that U.S. commercial shipping interests
lag at least five years behind some of their foreign counterparts in moving
toward crewless commercial vessels.
“The U.S. commercial maritime industry is somewhat
conservative in adopting new technology, and so there’s a bit of wait-and-see
as to what’s happening in Europe,” Pribyl said.
Interest is awakening in Silicon Valley — to work with
European firms. Six months ago, Google partnered with the British engine maker
Rolls-Royce to develop machine intelligence software to help make autonomous
ships a reality. In January, Rolls-Royce opened a state-of-the-art research
facility in Turku, Finland, to focus on autonomous shipping.
Proponents say unmanned ships could be safer and more
environmentally friendly. But the real driver is a desire to lower costs.
“In five to 10 years, they are going to start pulling
people off of the ships....
The largest cost to operate a vessel is the people. You
have to feed them. You have to train them. You have to have facilities on board
for them. It costs a lot of money,” said Tim Barton, maritime chief engineer at
Leidos, a U.S. defense company in Reston, Virginia, that helped develop the Sea
Hunter.
Without crews, ships have no need for kitchens, sleeping
quarters, sick bays, recreational facilities and plumbing, making more room for
cargo.
The Norwegian drone vessel that will be the world’s first
autonomous ship is a joint project between YARA, a fertilizer conglomerate, and
Kongsberg Maritime, an offshoot of a defense business. Once the ship,
christened YARA Birkeland, enters autonomous operation, toting up to 120
20-foot containers per journey, it will pull congestion off Norwegian highways.
“They are replacing 40,000 truck journeys per year
between their factory and their two export ports,” said Peter Due, director of
autonomy at Kongsberg Maritime.
The factory is in Heroya, site of a large industrial
park. The crewless drone vessel will haul fertilizer along a fjord to ports in
Brevik and Larvik, a journey of up to 30 nautical miles through crowded waters.
No longer will trucks pass through high-density areas
with schools, leaving “emissions, dust, sound and traffic safety (concerns),”
Due said.
Such coastal routes are where experts see the biggest
near-term opening for autonomous vessels. By remaining in the territorial
waters of a single nation, shipping lines don’t have to deal with a vacuum of
international regulation regarding autonomous ships.
In a second project, Kongsberg Maritime has developed a
prototype for an ocean-going light-duty utility ship, dubbed the Hronn, that
could take supplies to North Sea oil rigs without a crew aboard.
“One of the success factors that make Norway a leader in
this is that we are a small nation, 5.3 million people. It’s very, very easy to
get to decision makers. We’re on a first name basis with our prime minister,”
Due said.
Autonomy is farther off for large, ocean-going ships.
Those vessels already have comparatively small crews, and a fraction of the
labor costs of coastal vessels, which can eat up a third or more of operating
expenses, Due said.
Bigger ships will incorporate automation more slowly.
“I don’t think you’ll see … an unmanned oil tanker for
quite a while,” said Jan Hagen Andersen, business development manager for the
Houston office of DNV GL, a global adviser and registrar to the maritime industry.
But Andersen said the autonomy revolution is coming fast
in other corners of shipping.
“If you’d asked the maritime industry four or five years
ago about autonomy or unmanned vessels, we would’ve said, no, that’s all
science fiction,” Andersen said. “But I think today you see real commercial
projects that are being developed.”
In some functions, crewless boats make particular sense,
such as fireboats that must get near burning ships and can be operated
remotely, and tugboats, experts said.
Autonomous ships also could sidestep the human error that
Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, a marine risk firm, estimates cause
75 percent to 96 percent of marine accidents.
“Avoidance or reduction of human error is a significant
element” of the move toward autonomous shipping, Mark Johnson, a former Royal
Navy commander now at the Shipping Group of law firm Reed Smith in London.
“Insurers do see benefit in it.”
Autonomous vessels will be cheaper to build, and more
energy efficient. If seized by pirates, there is no crew held hostage to use as
leverage for ransom. But they do have down sides. No immediate repairs are
possible on an unmanned ship.
“If you were to lose the remote-control link, what
happens to the vessel?” Johnson asked, saying such questions are yet to be
worked out in international convention.
The future of many mariners is to have dry shoes,
confined to control rooms at shipping lines, monitoring data from unmanned
cargo vessels thousands of miles away.
“They can’t fight it. It’s coming and they know it,”
Balzano said.
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