1. Tomorrow’s Maritime World
London International Shipping Week
14 September 2017
Mikael Makinen, President – Marine, Rolls-Royce
Greeting and introduction

2. Tomorrow’s Business Solutions
- An engineering perspective
Using this slide to:
Reflect what has been discussed during the conference
Echo a point as necessary
Set the perspective/focus on ‘engineering’

3. Technology building blocks
Situation Awareness
Big data
analytics
Automatic crossing
From science fiction to reality
Start the discussion by saying that most of the technologies building blocks related to autonomous vessels already exist today.
For example, situation awareness
As sensor and computer technology progress, unmanned vessel no longer requires a bridge but has an electronic lookout and relies on a wide range of sensors and use learning algorithms to recognise objects around it and accurately know its real-time location.
Information from on-board sensors will then be fused and interpreted to build a machine-understandable picture of the situation for its own and surrounding vessels. The vessel will perform a set of manoeuvre to avoid collisions and be compliant with seakeeping regulations.
Auto-crossing and auto-docking
The automatic crossing system ensures safe and energy-efficient transit back and forth by automatically controlling the vessel’s acceleration, deceleration, speed and track.
The captain will supervise the automatic system and intervene using traditional manoeuvring systems if needed. To begin with, the captain will manoeuvre the ferry manually the last few metres to the dock.
If the captain is not, for some reason, able to take manual control, the system stops the vessel at a safe distance from the quayside and keeps it safely positioned automatically until further action can be taken.

4. Skills Joining the dots… mechanical, digital, electrical
Having these technology building blocks doesn’t necessarily mean we can relax now. There are big challenges for companies that are ambitious to make autonomous vessel happen, including Rolls-Royce.
Some of the challenges are ‘known’ and being addressed.
For example:
1) Skill shift
Even though this is not a problem for society as a whole where we have different resource pools globally, for individuals and individual companies, we foresee a shift in skillset requirement in the maritime industry from mechanical to electrical and software engineering. This in the short term will create a gap in some companies that result in inorganic growth or consolidations in some places.
Rolls-Royce has been increasing the intake of software engineers and data analyst to establish a suitable workforce.

5. Systems Joining the dots… fleet, communication, data, control
2) System integration capability
The challenges in the mechanical and electrical interface have always existed but the development of autonomous vessel will bring this to a new level.
The building blocks in the first section are only a start. How we bring them together as a functioning system impose some new challenge to ship design and system integration that we are familiar with.
We will have new and larger infrastructures such as remote operations centres, fleet operation centres; ships are not designed as a standalone ‘machine’ but an organic cell that communicates with other ships and shores.
It is key to ensure the interface of infrastructures and systems have compatible and stable communication.

6. Where are we now in this journey?
Many milestones have been achieved in the past years.
In February 2017, Rolls-Royce and Svitzer demonstrated the world’s first remote controlled commercial vessel, Hermod, in Copenhagen.
In this demonstration, a captain on-shore in a remote control centre completed a set of manoeuvres relying on the on board sensors (Radar, Lidar, Camera and Audio) and satellite.
This is happening.

7. New challenge: building trust
A fundamental question for us: ‘can it be trusted?’
A phased market adoption plan
‘ALARP’ - As Low As Is Reasonably Practicable
safety philosophy
With the recent demonstration project we can foresee that engineering and technology capability may no longer be the bottleneck.
To commercialise and industrialise autonomous ships, we need to have international regulatory framework, appropriate insurance models and legal liability (These points would have been touched in the day by other experts so suggest not to repeat or expand at length)…
Whenever a new technology comes to horizon, the fundamental question for us is ‘can it be trusted?’ Trust is earned, step by step. Without the build-up we will struggle to make autonomous ship widely operational. How do we build trust in autonomous ships, as a company that takes pride in its engineering capabilities and innovative technologies?
We have a phased plan for market adoption, from advisory, to control, to fully autonomous.
We will start with advisory items on-board systems to increase safety and efficiency for vessel by reducing crew workloads and increasing awareness. Some functionality is akin to automotive, such as “safe-transit” and “safe-docking” though sensor-fusion and bridge systems. At an early stage, system is purely advisory with captain remaining in full control of vessel at all times.
Once accepted, we may move to “auto-transit,” “convoy-transit,” “auto-watch-keeper” and “auto-docking”, gradually reduce the tasks that a crew need to intervene and system will have capability to assume control though require captain supervision.
Rolls-Royce’s safety philosophy/approach for safety 
Overall aviation safety level is approximately 100 times better compared to shipping based on the annual number of total losses / number of fleet. Rolls-Royce stringent safety requirements in Nuclear and Aerospace will play a key role in how we offer something different for autonomous ships.
In Rolls-Royce, we follow a principle called ALARP – As Low As Is Reasonably Practicable. That means safety risks shall be reduced until the point is reached where they are tolerable and the sacrifice required to reduce the risk further is grossly disproportionate to the safety benefit that would be achieved. And the same principle and related process will be adopted for Marine. This gave me confidence that our autonomous ships have something different and great to offer.

8. ” “Take the best that exists and make it better…
If it doesn’t exist, create it. ”
Sir Henry Royce