With my passion for maritim topics, I found again something I was thinking about earlier. Many years ago, when I watched a ghostship movie, I was thinking if there will be any future possibilies for self-driving ships. Well, technology will make it possible…

The luxury brand Rolls Royce is currently developing the self driving ships. The first real robot ships should be able to cross our oceans by 2020. The company, which is actually developing cars and engines, has launched an initiative called ‘Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications (Aawa).’ It is currently testing a number of sensors in Finland on a 65 m long ferry. According to Levander (Vice-Presedent of RR Ocean Innovation), the autonomous ship control system is already ready for use. The draft on the picutre below shows their idea of modern shipping.

This picure shows the view through Virtual-Reality-glasses. The captain in a controll center somewehre in the headquater can see the environment around, the speed, possible obstackles, wind movement and much more. For transporting goods it also means less human ressource costs. The following video explains briefly the controll center process.

Our future brings incredible chances, improvement and new possiblites. But I am also asking myself, with the growing poplulation of human beings, won’t it be bad for us if machines start doing more and more jobs with a better and safer performance, compared to us … Where will this bring our society?

Sources:

http://www.ingenieur.de/Branchen/Schiffbau-Meerestechnik/Rolls-Royce-entwickelt-autonomes-Containerschiff accessed by the 18th of May 2017

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/autonom-fahrende-frachter-geisterschiffe-erobern-die-meere-a-1130154.html accessed by the 18th of May 2017