Human factors in unmanned navigation

Unmanned, autonomous merchant ships might be reality before we know it. (In fact, drones are already in the air and both under and above the water in military applications). The driving force might be the need to control emissions. So called "slow-steaming" minimises energy consumption per ton-mile. However, slower voyages might be unacceptable from a societal point of view in an industry that is already having problems attracting qualified personal.

The feasibility of unmanned, autonomous merchant vessels was investigated by the EU project MUNIN (Maritime Unmanned Navigation through Intelligence in Networks). Dr. Porathe and the Maritime Human Factors group at the Department of Shipping and Marine Technology at Chalmers was responsible for the remote Shore Control Centre. In the investigated scenarios, the ships was to be manned while departing and entering port and unmanned during ocean-passage. When unmanned, the ships would be controlled by an automatic system informed by onboard sensors allowing the ship to make standard collision avoidance manoeuvres according to international regulation. The ship would be continuously monitored by a remote shore centre able to take remote control should the automatic systems fail. For the humans in the shore control centre, we found that the usual problems of automations remained, as well as a pronounced problem of keeping up adequate situation awareness through remote sensing. The big challenge for the project was to show that an unmanned system is at least as safe as a manned ship system, and to provide the shore control operators with adequate situation awareness.