Rolls-Royce plans to build giant unmanned ships for maritime freight

After selling its automotive division to Germans from BMW, Rolls-Royce is currently focused on manufacturing turbine engines and plans to enter the maritime freight market (with a volume of $ 375 billion / year) with its unmanned vehicle, 8BANKS reports .

The concept design of a drone cargo ship from Rolls-Royce.

Unmanned ships will be guided by GPS. Without a crew crew that needs to pay salaries and feed, and which carries human risk, delivery should be even easier, safer and cheaper. According to the company Moore Stephens LLP, which provides accounting and consulting services in the field of maritime transportation, crew maintenance costs $ 3,299 / day, which is about 44 percent of the total daily operating expenses for a large cargo ship. You can find more literature on calculations in the field of logistics here .


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Of course, the trade unions are not thrilled with this idea. Dave Heindel, chairman of the seafarers' union in London, writes: “A drone cannot and will not replace the eyes, ears and brain of professional sailors. The human factor is one of the first signals that trigger in the event of equipment failure or abrupt changes in conditions, which, as we know, is not uncommon in the field of maritime transport. Drones are a too risky undertaking, which ultimately with a high probability can adversely affect the environment. "
The prospect of a drone ship is within our technological capabilities, but sending to a ship without a captain can have a lot of legal consequences, so it makes sense to postpone this idea.

In order to solve all these potential problems, the European Union allocated $ 4.8 million to a project called MUNIN (short for Maritime Unmanned Navigation through Intelligence in Networks). This is a GPS-based system, which should prevent the possibility of getting off sea UAVs, and will generally ensure its safe operation. The diagram below shows how a smaller ship is detected using the MUNIN system, the probability of a collision is determined and, if so, the UAV ship is redirected along the green arrow to prevent a crash.



Who will be interested, a complete presentation of the MUNIN system in English here .