Rolls-Royce (RR/) Holdings Plc is designing unmanned cargo ships.
Rolls-Royce’s Blue Ocean development team has set up a virtual-reality prototype at its office in Alesund, Norway, that simulates 360-degree views from a vessel’s bridge. Eventually, the London-based manufacturer of engines and turbines says, captains on dry land will use similar control centers to command hundreds of crewless ships.
Drone ships would be safer, cheaper and less polluting for the $375 billion shipping industry that carries 90 percent of world trade, Rolls-Royce says.
The company’s schematics show vessels loaded with containers from front to back, without the bridge structure where the crew lives. By replacing the bridge — along with the other systems that support the crew, such as electricity, air conditioning, water and sewage — with more cargo, ships can cut costs and boost revenue, Levander said. The ships would be 5 percent lighter before loading cargo and would burn 12 percent to 15 percent less fuel, he said.
Crew costs of $3,299 a day account for about 44 percent of total operating expenses for a large container ship, according to Moore Stephens LLP, an industry accountant and consultant.
Unmanned ships are currently illegal under international conventions that set minimum crew requirements, said Simon Bennett, a spokesman for the London-based International Chamber of Shipping, an industry association representing more than 80 percent of the global fleet.
Nextbigfuture proposed solutions to problems of Drone Container ships
* have minimum crews operate as parking valet crews to hop onto the ship just outside the territorial waters of a port that requires minimum crews.
* Use some cost savings to fund rapid security deployment teams [mercenaries] to retake any pirated ship or hacked drone ship. A pirated ship can only get about 500 miles in one day
Need to have a hackproof way to stop the ship – a safety stall switch
There needs to be a hackproof way to stop the ship safely.
This would prevent the ship from being used to blackmail the ship owner or others by ramming it into something that would cause a lot of life loss and expensive damage.
Stealing containers not that big a deal
Attempts to board the ship and remove containers is not that meaningful. It would be difficult to unload the ship quickly.
It would be easy and affordable to put tracking beacons on each of the different containers. This would also be useful for rapid wireless inventory.
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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