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 required on board. In this article, different possible combinations of tasks to be replaced are explored systematically, leading to an overview of the most beneficial combinations of tasks to replace together and a logical sequence in which to replace them. This leads to a plausible implementation path from low-manned ships towards fully unmanned autonomous ships.

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 shipping, ranging from availability of workforce, to increased safety to economic. This article investigates the economic viability of several low-manned ship concepts as well as the unmanned ship concept for a short sea container vessel. The operating cost of these concepts are compared to those of a conventional vessel. That way, an assessment can be made on the economic viability. The results show that the low-manned concepts investigated in this article are worthwhile for the ship owner, as some savings can be achieved. The economic viability of the unmanned concept is dependent on the chosen type of propulsion.

Recently, autonomous ships have gotten a lot more attention both in the media and in research. However, very little research has focussed on the effects of automation on the size of the crew. This paper analyses the effects of added automation on the required size and composition of the crew on a 750 TEU short sea container vessel. A Crew Analysis Algorithm is used to determine the cheapest crew composition to perform the tasks required to operate a ship. Using this algorithm, two potential automation options are investigated: automating the navigation tasks and automating the mooring tasks. Automating the navigation tasks decreases the required crew size in the normal sailing and arrival & departure phases by 3 and 1 crew members, respectively. The loading & unloading phase is unaffected. Automating the mooring tasks reduces the required crew in the arrival & departure phase to 2. It is concluded that since individual automation options do not affect the crew requirements for all travel phases, their effect on crew reduction is limited unless several options are combined. However, with a change in task assignment and different training of crew members, a reduction of the required number of crew members is possible.