The recent advancements in artificial intelligence are promising a revolution in the transportation industry. Self-driving cars are being tested, drones are a ubiquitous presence in the sky, and unmanned trains are already travelling between airport terminals. But the revolution does not stop on land and in the air. It is spreading rapidly across the world’s water bodies. In the marine industry, innovation is already evident in the advancement of remotely operated underwater vehicles and automated navigation and control systems on manned ships. The real revolution, however, will come from the emergence of unmanned marine systems and fully autonomous shipping.
This article is the second part of a series, in which I try to shed more light on this topic, which arouses as much excitement, as it sparks controversy. Shipping is the backbone of the global economy and even though its development attracts less public attention than automobiles and aircraft, it has just as many stakeholders and requires just as much analysis and discussion.
As with all innovations, a new system of operational requirements will be necessary to ensure safety, efficiency and reliability of these new autonomous systems.
Tom White, innovation specialist at Lloyd’s Register, was kind enough to have a chat with me about their current vision on autonomous shipping. Lloyd’s Register (LR) is a ship classification society and independent risk management organization, providing worldwide risk assessment and mitigation services and certifications.
The Shipyard: The Global Marine Technology Trends 2030 report, published in 2015, stated that “Technology development is accelerating and will continue to do so. There is no indication that its rapid pace will slow in the next 15 years, nor will the trend toward the increasingly integrated nature of technology applications reverse.” In what ways does Lloyd’s Register support innovation and emergence of new technology, specifically in the autonomous shipping area?
Tom White: Communications are more connected now, ideas spread faster, and we understand the technologies better. Technology turns ideas into deployable solutions faster than we can.
Typically in the marine industry we build up experience over time, like when we started using steel instead of wood, or when we started using welds instead of rivets. We learn by deploying technology. We can trace many of our regulatory requirements in the marine industry back to a specific incident, something that went wrong somewhere at some time, and why.
The big challenge when the technology is changing so fast, is to keep up with it. At LR, we do this through close collaboration between industry and the regulators. Technology providers, such as predictive technologies from the airspace industry or autonomous technologies from cars, are bringing those to marine end-users who will try to deploy those technologies together with the shipyards. Then you have the regulators. The way we try to respond to all these technologies is by working closely in collaboration with all those parties right from the outset.
As soon as a technology company wants to bring a technology into the marine industry, Lloyds is involved with them right from the very start. An example is our work with Rolls-Royce a couple of years ago. They were the first with a remote-control tug, with a vision of an autonomous tug in the future. We have been working with them from the start and their predictive maintenance is one of the foundational technologies with autonomy. If you have the aim of taking people off an asset, then you have to understand the health of the asset through breakthrough technology. This understanding comes from working with the people.
The Shipyard: In recent times, when speaking about emerging technologies, people use the word disruption more often than transformation. Many people are worried that the new autonomous systems will disrupt employment and the shipping industry as a whole. What do you think are the main potential benefits that will come with the development of intelligent autonomous ships?
Tom White: There are quite a few. There is a well-known saying “disrupt or be disrupted”. If a change is coming, then it is about finding benefits for you, finding how that could fit your whole business model, or how you can use that to disrupt the industry yourself and create a competitive advantage.
We have to go back to the problem that we are actually trying to solve with autonomous technology. It should not just be autonomy for autonomy’s sake. What are we actually trying to do? When you consider that 60 percent of all marine accidents are collisions and 80 percent of those collisions are due to human error, then autonomy in an area like navigation starts to have benefits in not only safety, but the financial risk tied to your asset. This could have an additional business benefit in terms of insurance premiums.
This is how the aerospace industry has adopted the technology. Although they have autopilot systems which can carry out 90 percent of a transatlantic flight, that doesn’t mean there are less pilots in the world. That means that pilots are more focused and are able to respond better because they are more alert at specific times.
This is something that the marine industry needs to think about. Instead of the crew doing jobs that could be automated, the crew can refocus their skill-set on the things they are best at. Improving the operations, solving problems – this is what you want people to be doing, not procedural things. To be able to realize the benefits, the marine industry needs to keep up with the pace of change with training and upskilling of crew.
There could be other benefits around optimization of operating costs. For example, an autonomous system can take in much more information about the way an engine operates, as well as the external environment and operating history of that engine. It can take in all of that information and provide insight on how to optimize the function of the equipment, reducing operating costs.
There are many potential benefits, but autonomous technology has to have an objective. It has to create some benefit or relieve some pain in the industry.
The Shipyard: The successful operation of autonomous systems is highly dependent on a number of technologies, including networks and communications for connectivity, sensor technologies for situational awareness, technologies for cyber security, as well as energy management and sustainment. What are the main challenges for Lloyd’s Register in the fast-moving world of such innovations?
Tom White: It probably relates to an earlier point I made about how the industry is typically built by requirements, by something going wrong and then protecting against it. Aside from better cooperation, we also have to think about new ways of testing and providing assurance for equipment. A good example is new sensor technology for situational awareness, which will be a part of any autonomous navigation system. How can we test it before it is exposed to the real world? Do we use a simulated environment, or test in controlled zones? We have to build up the knowledge of how this technology can fail and what can affect it, so that we can manage its safety. Building such knowledge in the past has taken years, decades even. That would be one of the biggest challenges.
The Shipyard: Lloyd’s Register has already published a Code for Unmanned Marine Systems. At the rate of development of artificial intelligence, do you think this code is sufficient to guide companies in the shipping industry? Will it be applicable to larger vessels, for example fully autonomous container ships?
Tom White: It is important to understand that autonomous does not necessarily equal unmanned. Autonomous technology has the purpose of fixing a specific problem, perhaps one specific system on a ship. You might have a completely autonomous navigation system on a fully crewed ship, only this crew is now doing different jobs. At Lloyds we have taken a few different perspectives, based on industry collaboration, of what we need to address and where. The Unmanned Marine Systems Code is one process that we have established, which specifically deals with the unmanned nature of a ship. We also have the Digital Ships ShipRight for autonomous remote-controlled and remote-accessed systems. It works at the system level, where you could have, for example, a fleet of ships with all engines controlled from a central place.
In terms of whether those procedures are sufficient and up to date, we have the fundamental challenge to ensure that terminology is consistent throughout the industry, within regulatory bodies, within class societies, or within technology providers. For example, in our Marine Systems Code we reference an autonomy level of 1 to 6. Through our recent work with partners like Rolls Royce, we have refined it to levels 1 to 5. Our own understanding changes over time. This is the value of working together with people and being involved in these technology projects from the very start.
But there needs to be a consolidated approach in the industry as a whole. We all need to be working off the same sheet of paper to be able to apply regulatory frameworks. I think this will constantly keep evolving as technology improves, as understanding builds in the industry, as we develop a consensus that this is an AL1 system and this is an AL3 system, and so on. The definitions and specifications will keep evolving over time, but that’s nothing new.
The Shipyard: How do you see the future role of seafarers?
Tom White: You have to adopt things based on your objective, so there will be different types of adoption in different areas of the industry. For us, technology should be an enabler to do things better and to support the crew. You have to enable people to do the best they can in what they are doing. In the future, we see the crew moving away from on-board maintenance and focusing on the operation. A fundamental part of what we do is to work with the Sailors Society and other bodies to develop training for crew.
The Shipyard: Do you think autonomous ships will be a positive step towards marine safety and preservation of the environment?
Tom White: Safety is the core of everything, and that is why we are interested in these technologies. Going back to our collision argument, that 80 percent of collisions are due to human error, companies are now working on technologies for ships to talk to each other and to ports, so as to reduce collisions. Airspace is controlled in the same way, by having the aircraft talking to a central position. Every aircraft knows where others are, all the collisions are modelled out, planned and avoided. There is a big potential for reducing accident rates in that way.
In addition, the technology is giving us access to more data about the assets, from which we can generate more insight. Through advanced automation, major equipment failures and catastrophic incidents can be easier to foresee and avoid. Reduced collisions mean less cargo spilled out into the environment.
There is also the argument about maintenance, namely that understanding more about how the asset operates and using that data to improve designs can reduce emissions or increase efficiency. The potential is there.
The Shipyard: When can we expect to see fully autonomous ships to set sail? Will the transition happen gradually or suddenly?
Tom White: Technological change can happen really rapidly. Regulatory change, on the other hand, typically doesn’t. I think that we will first see a slow buildup of capabilities in focused technologies, such as focused autonomous navigation systems and focused autonomous performance optimization systems for engines. The transition will be about building up all the necessary steps until one day we may eventually have a fully autonomous ship. We will first see test cases of specific systems designed to fulfill a specific purpose, then we will need to address the specific regulations around that specific function, and that will slowly build up into a larger argument. Particularly in a regulated environment like shipping.
The Shipyard: Is there anything else you find important to put out there on the subject?
Tom White: For me the most important thing is how the industry addresses the challenges and how important collaboration is from the start. There are a lot of questions about how autonomous technology will affect our industry and about how it will affect crews on board ships. I think there is some misunderstanding in the industry. There is also no consolidated thinking or terminology on the subject yet. What we need is the technology companies and the ship operators to fully define the problems that they think we can solve through autonomy. We have to do this in a safe way, through experimentation and testing in a controlled environment. It is potentially a big change for the industry, one we do not want to rush into. We might have to slightly rethink the way we do things, but the best way to do that is through collaboration.
See you next time!
The Shipyard
P.S. Enjoyed this interview? Click here to find out what the International Maritime Organization has to say about this topic!