HANSA 04-2018

Schiffstechnik | Ship Technology
of Rio de Janeiro. Holm (RISE Viktoria)
adds an interesting element for anybody
working with AIS data. His approach
speeds up decoding large AIS encoded
data sets into clear text by a factor 20-
30 compared to alternative decoding.
Good news for performance monitoring
and other applications!
Virtual Reality makes maritime training a different game
Get your propeller design via your smartphone – Appification rules
It is time to buy yourself some VR goggles, if we are to believe the experts at COMPIT
Source: DNV GL
Source: Friendship Systems
Source: SENER
Autonomous under your nose
There is no escape from the discussion
about unmanned shipping – also not at
COMPIT. However, while transatlantic
20.000 TEU containerships without
crews still are utopia, Artificial Intelligence
enters in many forms our daily life,
also in marine operations. Think small,
think components – and you will see it.
Situational awareness and collision
avoidance is such a component where autonomous
technology progresses rapidly
from concept to implementation. The
developments are in many ways akin to
close-range parking aids in cars: While
the driverless car makes the news, systems
for enhanced situational awareness
and support for parking are so ubiquitous
in modern cars that we hardly notice
them at all anymore. Le Gallic et al.
(Aland University) test autonomous collision
avoidance on a 4 m autonomous surface
vessel. Using such ASVs for prototype
testing of algorithms is typical, as
test platforms are cheap and legally much
easier to operate than real ships. Alternatively,
you may test in nautical simulators,
such as Schubert et al. (University
of Applied Sciences Wismar) or Tank et
al. (University of Oldenburg).
While many smaller autonomous systems
become already reality, some nations
set sight on the horizon where we
see unmanned ships arise. Norway is one
of them, but Finland is in hot pursuit. One
Sea, a consortium of industry partners,
is paving the path to autonomous maritime
operations, as described by Merenluoto
(Dimecc). Matsuo (NMRI) seems
to be determined that Japan would be at
least among the medal ranks. The Japanese
roadmap to shipping 2050 foresees
unmanned shipping side-by-side with
manned ships – where crew training is
replaced by direct knowledge download
from the cloud to the brain.
Until we have such direct downloads
as a convenient highway to insight and
knowledge – a Nuremberg funnel of the
digital ages – the next-best thing is attending
COMPIT with an open mind for
new technologies and contacts. M
68 HANSA International Maritime Journal – 155. Jahrgang – 2018 – Nr. 4