Factors Influencing the Economic Feasibility of Unmanned Ships

The research effort into unmanned and autonomous ships has increased significantly over the last decade. Although not all required technology is currently commercially available, consensus is that from a technical standpoint, unmanned shipping is possible. The next question is: is it economically feasible to operate an unmanned ship. The...

Towards unmanned cargo ships: A task based design process to identify economically viable low and unmanned ship concepts

Unmanned and low-manned transport has increasingly been studied this past decade. While there have been successful trials for autonomous navigation, unmanned cargo ships are not commercially available yet. First, this dissertation investigates how changes to a ship’s systems and organizational structure can affect the crew’s size and composition...

Identification of a task-based implementation path for unmanned autonomous ships

Autonomous and unmanned shipping are currently hot topics in the maritime industry. However, there are many different views on how the ultimate goal of an unmanned, autonomous ship will be reached. On any given ship, a large range of tasks is performed every day, each of which need to be replaced in such a way that no human presence is...

A task-based analysis of the economic viability of low-manned and unmanned cargo ship concepts

While successful trials for autonomously navigating ships have been conducted, commercially available unmanned cargo ships are currently unavailable. However, there are many solutions available that will allow for low-manned ship concepts long before fully unmanned ships are possible. There are many drivers for low-manned and unmanned...

Ship collision avoidance methods: State-of-the-art

Collision prevention is critical for navigation safety at sea. At early ages, researchers aimed at developing navigational assistance systems for enhancing situational awareness of human operators as human is at the core of collision avoidance. Recently, autonomous vehicles have gained a remarkable amount of attention with a focus on solving...

Manoeuvrability and communication requirements for safe operation when manned and unmanned vessels meet

This thesis proposes two methods two solve the challenge of communication between manned and unmannd vessels. The first solution is to avoid communication by staying well clear. The second solution is to develop a protocol based on existing systems and protocols, to facilitate communication between manned and unmanned vessels.