This is what an undisrupted industry sounds like. You hear it from train driver unions, banks, and doctors.
There is merit in what they say about safety, but they see it not as a set of problems that might be overcome, but as a way of shutting down the conversation. They don't want to think about how easily a significant part of what they do could be automated or eliminated.
The heuristic is not that they object, it is that they don't want to discuss, even as speculation.
It's interesting that one place these objections haven't come up is air travel. Because if you think about it, air travel should be a place we fear to automated, but we already did it. Autopilot sort of sneaked in before people realized what automation was, and pilots are comfortable that they still have a place alongside the machines, so they are happy to talk, and explain as slowly as necessary that automated landing might be a good idea one day, but automating a crash landing wouldn't work out well.
The way this usually seems to work out is, everyone says it's impossible, until someone does it, and eats the other players alive. The most interesting thing here is that the insurers are the barrier. When drone designs are up and running, there will be a niche for an insurer that will take the risk, and in these days of crowd funding, you wouldn't need to be an entrenched player to take it.
It’s easy to miss the bigger picture here. With a fully automated unmanned ship you could explore business models that you otherwise would never consider.
For instance, With no humans aboard you could have a ship that is super slow and super energy efficient, it could cast itself out into currents, use a variety of novel locomotive methods in a significantly longer but cheaper journey. With no people aboard to pay, feed, etc, it wouldn’t matter how long it took.
While this is one novel scenario, which probably wouldn’t work for a million reasons, there are probably a hundred more ideas that would work for a automated ship that are currently unfeasible.
-I liked this quote: "“If everybody in the industry would say, ‘Yes, this is the way to go,’ then we are too late.”
-I think it's possible. It might also be viable to have a mix of a few manned ships (cargo or otherwise) leading a group of drone ships.
-We, as humans, need to get used to the fact that machines are going to become better (not to mention cheaper) than us at almost every task we now classify as human only.
-And this makes me envision a time in the future where Somali pirates use computers instead of guns to take over ships.
This idea fails a basic reality check -- piracy. During my around-the-world solo sail (http://arachnoid.com/sailbook) I heard any number of accounts of cargo vessels being boarded by pirates late at night, to steal cargo and slip away undetected by the skeleton crew that shipping operators prefer. The idea of a robot vessel would only make this problem worse.
The article says, "Unmanned ships would also reduce risks such as piracy, since there would be no hostages to capture ..."
But much piracy, for example in the eastern Indian Ocean, is after cargo, not hostages. Pirates could disable the propulsion system of, then loot, a robot cargo ship in the far reaches of the Indian Ocean where governmental controls are much weaker than elsewhere.
I think that's a solvable problem. As quoted in the article, just make the trouble of stealing cargo more hassle than it's worth. I'm not saying it'd be easy, but it's not the showstopper you make it out to be.
It might still make economical sense to hire a gunship to protect the "droneships" while passing high-risk areas.
Besides, take some of the money saved on salaries and use it for foreign aid to countries such as Somalia and you'd have stopped piracy before you know it.
I don't know anything about shipping, but I wonder how much of the crews' time is spent in maintenance and repairs. Are they trained to fix common issues? What happens when the robot boats break down?
Or are they just there to fill minimum crew size regulations and babysit ships that mostly drive themselves anyways?
I too see this happening, and am always surprised these companies aren't pushing faster for this... I also think of delivery vans and lorries around the city - whenever I walk to work I see about a dozen delivery vans and lorries, all just driving back-and-forth to deliver bread to shops, etc. and I always think that one day, we'll totally automate all this...
How? A driver-less truck pulls up to the front of a corner store. Then what? Someone still has to take the (correct) product from the truck, load it on a hand cart, take it into each shop and put it on the shelves. Normally this is the driver of the truck, but if you automate him away then every shop-keep need a guy hanging around to unload the auto-delivery trucks all day or take time away from serving customers to do it themselves.
That is not a clear net win to me. It is a physical manifestation of automated phone support. Cheaper to implement by the company but more time consuming and less useful for the users and less efficient overall...
> Cameras and sensors can already detect obstacles in the water better than the human eye.
I wish that was available on consumer sailing boats. There are lots of hazards for small vessels out there. And to be honest, lately big ships are one of them. No crew is actually watching anything other, but the radar & AIS, hence small boats can be destroyed and never found again.
As per piloting - the first crude autopilots were made in 1970s...
I see this as a reality. The majority of ships' machinery is already automated and/or controlled remotely, so it's not a huge leap to leave the operator(s) shoreside.
Do you think the reliability is up to it? I'm thinking of in relation to an airliner that was inspected just before a flight that will be at most 12 hours long.
OTOH, compare that to Oakland to Osaka (to pull two cities out of the air) and a trip taking around two weeks. What level of reliability do you need to have to ensure that nothing important breaks? Does this impose an additional cost that's less than the savings of having no crew.
It's an interesting idea that I'm sure will eventually happen but I'm wondering if it's really ready for prime time.
That reminds me of the futurist joke: In the future a {plane|factory|boat} will have only a dog and a human in it. The human is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to make sure the human doesn't touch the controls.
I suspect the bigger problem is that ultra reliable ships with state-of-the art communications and robotics will seldom be cheaper than a creaky old tub manned by Filipino sailors, especially Filipino sailors willing to accept non-unionized wages.
I think the major problem is that piracy has always, till now, had someone to "repel boarders".
Now it is a matter of climbing on board and breaking the locks. (And no I don't think automated guns will be an acceptable solution. I can't see the NY port Authotirty being happy about armed computers sliding into view.
(Why am I thinking of the Matrix cartoon / prequels now?)
Assuming you get boarded by pirates, what happens next? Why would you need a bridge that could command the ship? Even if you did, turn it off unless you can remotely switch it on again. How much damage can pirates do to an empty ship? Plus, no hostages, so there wouldn't be much stopping armed forces going in guns-blazing.
Negativity aside, this looks like the future I hope that consumer grade cars/transportation will eventually have this. I can imagine a highway of the future with a lane for autonomous vehicles instead of truck drivers.
What happens when armed pirates board a manned ship? The crew is unarmed and is supposed to lock themselves in a secure room, which is exactly the same as a computer would do.
The unmanned option is better in case of piracy, since due to lack of hostages there is less pressure for ransom and it's safer to re-capture the ship before it can be delivered to a pirate friendly port.
The real vulnerability of unmanned ship is against small-scale theft (a rubber dinghy boarding, opening a container and stealing a few TVs), but for large cargo ships thieves can do the same without the crew noticing; so it can be covered by insurance probably.
With no human operable "helm" there is no way to divert the ship, short of posessing an engine more powerful than the ship's engine, and no crew to hold hostage. Potentially some containers could be opened and looted, but the practical amount of looting is a fraction of one container.
The real objections should be about failure modes of ships and what a crew can to to mitigate them. But even this angle is susceptible to the possibility that the safest crew and ship is an un-crewed ship. If you are not on the ship, you can't cause an accident, and you won't die in an accident.
> With no human operable "helm" there is no way to divert the ship, short of posessing an engine more powerful than the ship's engine
Because engines are impossible to disable, GPS is impossible to spoof, and control systems are impossible to hack even with unlimited physical access.
> no crew to hold hostage
There's a fancy robotic ship and a bunch of cargo to hold hostage.
> the practical amount of looting is a fraction of one container
How do you reckon? I suppose if the value-density of the cargo were low enough then nobody would have incentive to steal it, so they would have to threaten to destroy it instead.
> The real objections should be about failure modes of ships and what a crew can to to mitigate them.
You're absolutely right. But piracy is one of those failure modes.
I would like to see some redundancy in navigational equipment before this becomes a reality. Currently ships only have traditional navigation methods to fall back on if satellite navigation fails. While there are some projects underway to find a seamless replacement for GNSS [1], none are quite there yet.
12 to 15 percent more efficient because you eliminate people? And where is the part where a miricle occurs and the laws of physics are modified?
The efficiency and pollution problem with cargo ships can't be fixed with more crgo ships. That's just insane. Build a dedicated high-speed nuclear, wind and solar powered high speed cargo train connecting the US coasts and the gulf. This alone would eliminate some ten thousand cargo ships per year making the trek through the Panama Canal. During this trek they burn over a million dollars of bunker fuel, the nastiest most polluting fuel you can burn.
Methinks this is just one of those "let's burn government money 'cause they don't know any better" scams. Not the first time.
It would be cool technology and cut emissions (12 to 15% is not bad at all) but I don't want to be on a dismasted yacht doing ocean crossing in the middle of a storm with all the nearest vessels computer-controlled, without life-support systems, unable to help me
When each shipment nets maybe $30,000,000 for the shipping company and you pay about £20,000 for the crew during that time, you'd need to save a lot of money elsewhere to make this worthwhile.
How would they be necessarily faster and less polluting?
Sure, waste from crew activities is part of the output, but most of it could be recycled or composted. The big source of pollution is the diesel engines, and those wouldn't change much.
And faster? Whatever weight savings came from removing crew accommodations would just be used to fit more TEUs for the trip.
Piracy is often profitable because of ransoms paid for crew as far as I know. The article seems to directly address this. With no crew on board, how would the pirates stop the ship from just continuing on to port with them on it? I suppose they could threaten to destroy the ship or something on the ship but that's no different than the situation now.
This was my initial thought. Then I realised whatever sensors are on-board these things would likely detect incoming pirate attacks (of the physical kind) from miles away (think satellites). At which point nearby naval forces would be alerted.
Hell, you could go a step further and equip each one with it's own drone to defend itself in case of attack.
i love how everyone here latches onto bad pirates boarding a drone.
why would a drone ship have any human navigable rigging? drones do not have cockpits, life support systems, etc. a drone ship would have cargo containers all around, no bridge, no control room, etc.
how do you board something that has no surface meant for humans?
Those containers were attached to the deck or other containers, and inspected. That requires humans to have access to the containers to lash them down, at least for those which reach above the deck. This requires a surface meant for humans.
[+] [-] shubb|12 years ago|reply
There is merit in what they say about safety, but they see it not as a set of problems that might be overcome, but as a way of shutting down the conversation. They don't want to think about how easily a significant part of what they do could be automated or eliminated.
The heuristic is not that they object, it is that they don't want to discuss, even as speculation.
It's interesting that one place these objections haven't come up is air travel. Because if you think about it, air travel should be a place we fear to automated, but we already did it. Autopilot sort of sneaked in before people realized what automation was, and pilots are comfortable that they still have a place alongside the machines, so they are happy to talk, and explain as slowly as necessary that automated landing might be a good idea one day, but automating a crash landing wouldn't work out well.
The way this usually seems to work out is, everyone says it's impossible, until someone does it, and eats the other players alive. The most interesting thing here is that the insurers are the barrier. When drone designs are up and running, there will be a niche for an insurer that will take the risk, and in these days of crowd funding, you wouldn't need to be an entrenched player to take it.
[+] [-] tenpoundhammer|12 years ago|reply
For instance, With no humans aboard you could have a ship that is super slow and super energy efficient, it could cast itself out into currents, use a variety of novel locomotive methods in a significantly longer but cheaper journey. With no people aboard to pay, feed, etc, it wouldn’t matter how long it took.
While this is one novel scenario, which probably wouldn’t work for a million reasons, there are probably a hundred more ideas that would work for a automated ship that are currently unfeasible.
[+] [-] matznerd|12 years ago|reply
-I think it's possible. It might also be viable to have a mix of a few manned ships (cargo or otherwise) leading a group of drone ships.
-We, as humans, need to get used to the fact that machines are going to become better (not to mention cheaper) than us at almost every task we now classify as human only.
-And this makes me envision a time in the future where Somali pirates use computers instead of guns to take over ships.
[+] [-] njharman|12 years ago|reply
My first thought, although probably not actual Somali's.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lutusp|12 years ago|reply
The article says, "Unmanned ships would also reduce risks such as piracy, since there would be no hostages to capture ..."
But much piracy, for example in the eastern Indian Ocean, is after cargo, not hostages. Pirates could disable the propulsion system of, then loot, a robot cargo ship in the far reaches of the Indian Ocean where governmental controls are much weaker than elsewhere.
[+] [-] GigabyteCoin|12 years ago|reply
Pirates may be able to approach the ship, but entering is a different story.
Cutting a hole in the side of the ship would be the only option I could see.
Same goes for disabling the propulsion system. If there's no cockpit, there's no switch to disable anything.
[+] [-] incision|12 years ago|reply
Lack of crew will greatly simplify the implementation as it can be trained to fire on all humans without concern for friendly fire.
[+] [-] gk1|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a1a|12 years ago|reply
Besides, take some of the money saved on salaries and use it for foreign aid to countries such as Somalia and you'd have stopped piracy before you know it.
[+] [-] dkoch|12 years ago|reply
Or are they just there to fill minimum crew size regulations and babysit ships that mostly drive themselves anyways?
[+] [-] vrikis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fr0sty|12 years ago|reply
How? A driver-less truck pulls up to the front of a corner store. Then what? Someone still has to take the (correct) product from the truck, load it on a hand cart, take it into each shop and put it on the shelves. Normally this is the driver of the truck, but if you automate him away then every shop-keep need a guy hanging around to unload the auto-delivery trucks all day or take time away from serving customers to do it themselves.
That is not a clear net win to me. It is a physical manifestation of automated phone support. Cheaper to implement by the company but more time consuming and less useful for the users and less efficient overall...
[+] [-] dzhiurgis|12 years ago|reply
I wish that was available on consumer sailing boats. There are lots of hazards for small vessels out there. And to be honest, lately big ships are one of them. No crew is actually watching anything other, but the radar & AIS, hence small boats can be destroyed and never found again.
As per piloting - the first crude autopilots were made in 1970s...
[+] [-] matznerd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gk1|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HeyLaughingBoy|12 years ago|reply
OTOH, compare that to Oakland to Osaka (to pull two cities out of the air) and a trip taking around two weeks. What level of reliability do you need to have to ensure that nothing important breaks? Does this impose an additional cost that's less than the savings of having no crew.
It's an interesting idea that I'm sure will eventually happen but I'm wondering if it's really ready for prime time.
[+] [-] matznerd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notahacker|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jevinskie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eru|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|12 years ago|reply
Now it is a matter of climbing on board and breaking the locks. (And no I don't think automated guns will be an acceptable solution. I can't see the NY port Authotirty being happy about armed computers sliding into view.
(Why am I thinking of the Matrix cartoon / prequels now?)
[+] [-] gk1|12 years ago|reply
Not really. The standard procedure to "repel boarders" is to:
1. Try to outmaneuver the pirate boat. 2. If that fails, point and blast fire hoses at pirates.
Crews don't [usually] carry firearms because of insurance liabilities. If there's no crew on board, then more robust defense mechanisms can be used.
[+] [-] DaveLond|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|12 years ago|reply
In any case, it seems ships already use sonic weapons against assailants, maybe those could be remote controlled.
[+] [-] drpgq|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wil421|12 years ago|reply
Negativity aside, this looks like the future I hope that consumer grade cars/transportation will eventually have this. I can imagine a highway of the future with a lane for autonomous vehicles instead of truck drivers.
Heck most airplanes fly themselves.
[+] [-] PeterisP|12 years ago|reply
The unmanned option is better in case of piracy, since due to lack of hostages there is less pressure for ransom and it's safer to re-capture the ship before it can be delivered to a pirate friendly port.
The real vulnerability of unmanned ship is against small-scale theft (a rubber dinghy boarding, opening a container and stealing a few TVs), but for large cargo ships thieves can do the same without the crew noticing; so it can be covered by insurance probably.
[+] [-] danmatan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|12 years ago|reply
With no human operable "helm" there is no way to divert the ship, short of posessing an engine more powerful than the ship's engine, and no crew to hold hostage. Potentially some containers could be opened and looted, but the practical amount of looting is a fraction of one container.
The real objections should be about failure modes of ships and what a crew can to to mitigate them. But even this angle is susceptible to the possibility that the safest crew and ship is an un-crewed ship. If you are not on the ship, you can't cause an accident, and you won't die in an accident.
[+] [-] jjoonathan|12 years ago|reply
Because engines are impossible to disable, GPS is impossible to spoof, and control systems are impossible to hack even with unlimited physical access.
> no crew to hold hostage
There's a fancy robotic ship and a bunch of cargo to hold hostage.
> the practical amount of looting is a fraction of one container
How do you reckon? I suppose if the value-density of the cargo were low enough then nobody would have incentive to steal it, so they would have to threaten to destroy it instead.
> The real objections should be about failure modes of ships and what a crew can to to mitigate them.
You're absolutely right. But piracy is one of those failure modes.
[+] [-] LeChuck|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.e-navigation.net/index.php?page=resilient-pnt-fro...
[+] [-] robomartin|12 years ago|reply
The efficiency and pollution problem with cargo ships can't be fixed with more crgo ships. That's just insane. Build a dedicated high-speed nuclear, wind and solar powered high speed cargo train connecting the US coasts and the gulf. This alone would eliminate some ten thousand cargo ships per year making the trek through the Panama Canal. During this trek they burn over a million dollars of bunker fuel, the nastiest most polluting fuel you can burn.
Methinks this is just one of those "let's burn government money 'cause they don't know any better" scams. Not the first time.
[+] [-] yread|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bbosh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cratermoon|12 years ago|reply
Sure, waste from crew activities is part of the output, but most of it could be recycled or composted. The big source of pollution is the diesel engines, and those wouldn't change much.
And faster? Whatever weight savings came from removing crew accommodations would just be used to fit more TEUs for the trip.
[+] [-] washedup|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotch_drinker|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a3n|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beagle90|12 years ago|reply
Hell, you could go a step further and equip each one with it's own drone to defend itself in case of attack.
[+] [-] splat|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pinaceae|12 years ago|reply
why would a drone ship have any human navigable rigging? drones do not have cockpits, life support systems, etc. a drone ship would have cargo containers all around, no bridge, no control room, etc.
how do you board something that has no surface meant for humans?
[+] [-] dalke|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] analog31|12 years ago|reply