Crewless container ships appear on the horizon

The Yara Birkeland cruises calmly through the Frierfjord in southern Norway and looks like an ordinary small ship.

By the end of the year, however, the crew will be reduced from five to two, and if all goes well, in two more years the ship’s bridge will be removed and there will be no crew on board at all.

Until then, Captain Svend Ødegård will be at the helm of the 80 meter long ship. “We’re taking big steps towards autonomy,” he tells the BBC. “There is a lot of installed technology that is not present on existing ships.”

Ultimately, the Yara Birkeland will navigate using sensors, including radar and cameras, that feed data to an artificial intelligence that will detect and classify obstacles in the water.

“We have situational awareness – cameras on the side, front and stern of the ship,” explains the captain. “It can decide to change its path because something is in the way.”

The captain’s job will be moved to the mainland, to a remote operations center more than 80 km (50 miles) away, where multiple ships could potentially be monitored simultaneously. If necessary, humans can intervene by sending commands to change speed and course.

The Yara Birkeland, owned by fertilizer giant Yara, has been sailing twice a week from the company’s huge factory near Porsgrunn to the port of Brevik for the last few months, transporting up to 100 containers and data along the 13 km (8 miles) long route collected.

“Ships that operate on short, regular and fixed routes offer good opportunities to introduce autonomous ship technologies,” says Sinikka Hartonen, Secretary General of the One Sea Association, an alliance of autonomous maritime companies and experts.

The project’s technology provider, Kongsberg, is working with Norwegian food wholesaler Asko on two more battery-powered autonomous barges in the Oslofjord and a fourth small container ship near Ålesund.

“Some of the technology has been around for many years. So it’s really a compilation,” says An-Magritt Ryste, Director of Next Generation Shipping at Kongsberg Maritime.

According to Ms. Ryste, there is also interest in the use of autonomous navigation in fishing vessels, passenger ferries and military vessels.

Kongsberg already manufactures autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), most of which perform seafloor mapping tasks for offshore energy, marine exploration and defense customers.

Recently, the company delivered an 8m unmanned surface vessel (USV) that detects fish stocks using acoustic sonars and navigates with AI, cameras, radar and GPS.

“They are also monitored by people who can intervene. But they are fully autonomous,” says Bjørn Jalving, senior vice president of technology at Kongsberg.

Kongsberg has scaled the technology for larger ships. “Ultimately, I think restrictions will not be technical, it’s about making it safe and secure while complying with regulations and doing good business for operators,” says Mr Jalving.

One of the great attractions for shipping companies is, of course, the cost savings from eliminating the crew on board. A team could potentially monitor multiple ships, Mr Jalving says. Also, it is safer for a crew to be on land than at sea.

Other companies are also working on autonomous shipping projects.

Last year, a 222m car ferry was self-navigated and docked in Japan using technology from Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Company.

Meanwhile, a merchant ship completed a month-long voyage from Texas to South Korea, autonomously navigating about half of the 20,000 km route.

Choosing the ship’s optimal route saved fuel and emissions, according to ship technology provider Avikus, part of shipbuilding company HD Hyundai.

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“You can use autonomy to limit dangerous or boring tasks,” says Marius Tannum, associate professor of applied autonomy at the University of Southeastern Norway.

“The Yara Birkeland project and the Asko ship project are bringing the technology to the real world and not just to research labs as we have been doing for many years.”

When it comes to safety, uncrewed ships need to be just as, if not better than, captained ships, says Prof Tannum, who believes there must always be a back-up – someone monitoring who could step in if necessary.

“Because this is a very new technology and hasn’t been tested that much in real life, we need this transitional period with crew on board,” says Prof Tannum. “Then we can gradually trust the autonomy to do more.”

However, autonomy opens up possibilities for new designs, he adds. “Without a crew, you can have more capacity for goods because you don’t need the living quarters, galley, heating, air conditioning and other systems,” adds Prof. Tannum.

However, there is skepticism as to whether large unmanned ships will be able to cross oceans any time soon. “First of all, the legal challenges have to be solved. And then the ship needs robust energy and propulsion systems that require very little maintenance,” emphasizes Prof. Tannum.

One of the biggest hurdles is regulation, and new rules need to be established.

“The current legislation was developed on the assumption that the equipment on board a ship is controlled entirely manually,” says Sinikka Hartonen, adding that the International Maritime Organization is now working on a framework.

“The regulation is completely new territory for maritime authorities and politicians in Norway. What they do will have international consequences,” says Yara project leader Jon Sletten.

Whatever happens, advances in autonomous shipping will likely outpace autonomous cars and trucks, according to Prof. Tannum.

“Autonomous cars move at high speed in the vicinity of dynamic and static obstacles, road conditions vary, and the complexity that cars face in regular traffic is more challenging than ships.

“Unmanned autonomous ships with a fixed route and a remote operation center (ROC) will operate with less risk than unmanned autonomous trucks driving in regular traffic,” he says.