Page 59 - Next Generation 2015 - Digtial Issue

Next Generation The future

could be used to fabricate spare will disappear, leading to a focus on third country, only to transport the cars
parts, leading to a reduction of costly trading distances, despite the efficiencies halfway round the world if there is no
onboard inventories and emergency found in today’s largest bulk vessels. economic advantage?
shipping costs.
As Wartsilä’s Tomas Aminoff points There is no question that this is a
There are predictions that as out, why mine iron ore in Australia, ship period of great change, but as our panel
global equality develops, the gains in it to China to create steel, then ship the of experts confirms, such change will be
producing goods in particular countries steel to a car manufacturer, possibly in a through evolution, not revolution.

FAST FORWARD 50 YEARS Oskar Levander, Rolls-Royce vice-president

ALL vessels will need to be more efficient in the future, says Oskar Mr Levander points to the development of propulsion
Levander, Rolls-Royce’s blue sky thinking guru. packages by companies such as Rolls-Royce as an indication
that this process has already started.
It was Mr Levander, while he was Wärtsilä, who pointed to
the development of liquefied natural gas as a marine fuel. But Systems and sensors are far more reliable than just a few
his vision of the future also includes automated shipbuilding and years ago, and with much cheaper reliable communication
scalable modular unmanned ships. tools, this opens the door for increased data — data that can
be used to support real-time vessel health checks, says Mr
Mr Levander is as convinced as ever that unmanned vessels Levander.
will be a reality. What is perhaps most surprising is that he thinks
the industry will begin to see the first demonstrators within the The systems will be more complex, but the interface with
coming decade. the human operator will become standardised and simpler.
Think of the development of smart phones. They are easy to
The first examples are likely to be small and used in the use, yet the systems inside are increasingly complex.
coastal waters of only one country, thereby avoiding the need to
comply with international crewing regulations that could make As ships become more complex, there will be fewer crew,
such a development difficult. so vessels will need to be easier to operate. And if something
goes wrong, there will be shore-based experts to assist, using
His argument is that as all the technology exists to make augmented reality. Crews will not be experts on all the onboard
unmanned ships a reality, the focus should be on complete systems, but will have enough competencies to be assisted with
system reliability. Unmanned vessels that are either autonomous any complex repairs.
or remote-controlled will be a key feature of the next 50 years,
according to Mr Levander. Remote sensing and modular packages will all lead towards
ships that are first remote-controlled and then autonomous.
The need for all ships to become more efficient will lead to
the development of improved hybrid solutions, with batteries “Humans remain better at making decisions in unforeseen
increasingly appearing in ship designs. In commercial shipping, events, but the computer can be better at deciding on foreseen
vessels will stick with mechanical drives for some time to come, but events,” says Mr Levander. He foresees remote operations
what will change is the industrialisation of their design, he says. centres developing to monitor and control fleets of unmanned
ships.
Shipyards will be where much of the change will be seen;
and as consolidation takes hold in shipbuilding, there will be more With this comes increased vessel traffic control, but Mr
standardisation in the systems and designs. Levander is keen to see a distinction between commercial and
government functions, so control centres and vessel traffic
Power storage, batteries, will play a bigger role, especially as should not be combined.
the technology improves and costs fall.
In short, shipping will start to mirror aviation, but it will
Mr Levander points to the aviation industry to highlight what need a revision of the Safety of Life at Sea Convention to enable
he means. There are not many airframe designs but there are some of these developments to occur.
plenty of airlines with aircraft with a range of scalable differences.
Mr Levander also sees changing demand influencing ship
While there will be more designs and more companies types. He is not a fan of the car carrier, with the inefficiencies
building ships than building aircraft, Mr Levander sees increased of its permanent ballast. It is a vessel he sees as limited by port
use of scalable modularisation with common optimised and infrastructure and other logistics choke points: Is it efficient to
validated systems. drive 6,000 cars separately into a vessel?

This will help raise reliability and efficiency, both operational Likewise with the containership that requires thousands of
and economic, to the next level. It will also support the drive for container lifts, it is important to look at the cargo unit and how
asset monitoring and performance benchmarking. Maintenance cargo is loaded and discharged, he says.
will be increasingly predictive and not prescriptive.

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