
Autonomous Ships - protomyth
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-16/autonomous-ships-will-be-great
======
chriskanan
I spent two years working on autonomous ships at NASA JPL, primary on
developing deep learning algorithms for ship detection and classification to
obey maritime traffic rules (COLREGS), avoid obstacles, help with decision
making, etc.

Regarding piracy, autonomy would cut down on costs a lot. Based on my
understanding, besides cutting down on life-support costs and having extra
room for more cargo, the ships would also be able to eliminate the cost of the
armed guards that many have kept on their ships since the rise of piracy.
That's one of the main reasons why we don't hear about piracy anymore [0].
With no controls on the ship, pirates wouldn't be able to take control.

Note also that Rolls Royce is looking into drone ships (rather than full
autonomy): [https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press-
releases/yr-2016/pr-...](https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press-
releases/yr-2016/pr-2016-03-22-rr-reveals-future-shore-control-centre.aspx)

[0] [http://www.marineinsight.com/marine-piracy-marine/18-anti-
pi...](http://www.marineinsight.com/marine-piracy-marine/18-anti-piracy-
weapons-for-ships-to-fight-pirates/)

~~~
jdavis703
What would stop heists on the high seas? For example, I could imagine someone
breaking into a container with "valuable" goods (remember a lot of these
pirates come from impoverished backgrounds, so being able to flip cargo still
net a nice profit).

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Possible, but unloading cargo would be more involved. Also, without access to
electronic manifests, I am not sure there's any easy way to know what's in a
container, not to mention many of them would be stacked in such a way as to
inaccessible. All of which is a lot harder than ransoming a crew. I suppose it
might be possible for pirates just to threaten to sink the ship.

~~~
toomuchtodo
One would simply disable propulsion and communications, and then haul the ship
elsewhere for classification and sale of its cargo.

With no humans on board, then there is no incentive not to use deadly force
for disabling critical subsystems.

~~~
sfifs
equivalently, there's no real incentive to not use deadly force to clean the
ships of pirates as a deterrence and take the write off on any damages.

I suspect with drone ships and the lack of crew liability, there will arise
contract security companies with pre-positioned ex-seal teams in hotspots to
deal with piracy.

------
Casseres
Former Marine Engineer here, I know there's​ at least one other HN users
that's an ME. You might be able to automate navigation, but never maintenance.
Something small that doesn't get fixed underway could cause a lot more damage
than whatever crew costs would have been saved.

Things break and leak all the time, even on new ships. Automatic valves get
stuck and things get clogged. I'm​ an air traffic controller now, and my break
is over, but I'll try to expand more later.

Edit: I have a few minutes. A lot of people are talking about pirates only
boarding ships to hold the crews hostage, and not to steal cargo. How about
this: a pirate demands a crypto currency payment within X number of hours, or
they sink the ship. It's very easy to sink a ship once you're inside.

~~~
hwillis
You could fly a helicopter out to any ship that isn't crossing the pacific or
atlantic, but that would be $100,000-$300,000 per incident and it would very
quickly not be worth it. There isn't much in-between for reducing crew since a
couple people alone on a boat together will probably be homicidal in short
order.

I'm curious, what breaks on a ship? I have no experience with anything over a
few dozen feet. I imagine hydraulic systems could break and lead to
Consequences, but I can't imagine there are many big systems that can be fixed
at sea, even with a crane onboard. What kind of things get fixed at sea?

~~~
nradov
You might as well ask what _doesn 't_ break on a ship. Salt water corrosion,
thermal stress, vibration, residue accumulation, and hull flexing due to large
swells are really hard on equipment. Here's a good case study on the type of
repairs that a merchant ship crew might have to perform in the middle of the
ocean.

[http://www.brighthubengineering.com/marine-engines-
machinery...](http://www.brighthubengineering.com/marine-engines-
machinery/91635-breakdown-and-repair-of-ships-main-diesel-engine-at-sea/)

Ocean going merchant ships spend much of their time outside of practical
helicopter range. And even when close to shore, winching a repair technician
down to a disabled autonomous vessel that can't even keep its bow into the
weather would be a dangerous affair.

------
thomasthomas
_By one consultant 's estimate, moreover, carrying sailors accounts for 44
percent of a ship's costs._

I find this hard to believe even if autonomous ships can be done without a
bridge. The Emma Maersk has 15,000 TEU and a crew of 13 [http://www.emma-
maersk.com/specification/](http://www.emma-maersk.com/specification/)

~~~
hwillis
"Crew costs of $3,299 a day account for about 44 percent of total operating
expenses for a large container ship, according to Moore Stephens LLP, an
industry accountant and consultant."[1]

The Maersk triple E's have a crew of 13 and consume ~136 tonnes/day of bunker
fuel[2] which costs currently ~$315/tonne[3], for a daily fuel cost of
$42,840. So right off the bat that number is very suspect. Even for other
ships like the CSCL Globe with a crew of 31, that's a 12x difference.

I don't understand how that estimate can possibly be true. Ship captains and
engineers make ~80k annual and crewmen make under 40k. For a crew of 20-30,
$3,299 would be basically bang on for a daily crew cost but there's no fucking
way fuel and depreciation only cost $4,200 a day. Even a 4000 TEU ship (tiny)
at 17 knots (snail) burns $15,000+ a day.[4]

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-25/rolls-
roy...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-25/rolls-royce-drone-
ships-challenge-375-billion-industry-freight)

[2]
[http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/13-09-12-1.php?cid=7401](http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/13-09-12-1.php?cid=7401)

[3]
[http://www.tsacarriers.org/calc_bunker.html](http://www.tsacarriers.org/calc_bunker.html)

[4]
[https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch8en/conc8en/fuel_c...](https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch8en/conc8en/fuel_consumption_containerships.html)

~~~
mabbo
While I agree with your analysis, one counter-argument I can think of: Is the
ship always using that much fuel?

I know a lot of ships spend days waiting to enter the panama canal, or days in
port. Crew is certainly paid for those days as well. What percentage of the
time is the ship fully underway and using fuel?

That 44% figure might be more reasonable if you're only burning fuel 1/3 of
the time.

~~~
hwillis
I did think of that, and also that you may need other shifts on retainer, and
the normal food/insurance/fees/overhead of employing people across borders.
Still though, for the triple E the expected fuel cost is 30x the expected crew
cost.

The stretches to explain that gap would be ludicrous eg 3 shifts, each costing
the company 3x more than their actual salary, and the engine being turned off
70% of the time. Even still that requires you to disregard depreciation, which
for the triple E is at _least_ $17,000 a day.

------
LeonM
As far as my knowledge goes about the shipping industry: ships are already 90%
automated (since they simply go straight forward for days/weeks). There is not
much to do for a captain/officer whilst in the middle of an ocean.

AFAIK most of the humans on board of a vessel are there to perform maintenance
(most of which can be done during transit).

Yes, we can automate the last 10% to make the ship sail itself, but we'd still
need humans on board to perform maintenance.

~~~
keebEz
Maybe fully autonomous ships should have maintenance performing robots then?

~~~
zardo
That is a way harder problem than automated sailing.

Also a way harder problem than just designing in longer service intervals.

------
nradov
I don't get it. What will they do when an autonomous ship loses power or
steering in the middle of the ocean outside of helicopter range? It can't just
pull over to the side of the road and stop.

Ships require constant maintenance to not fall apart. That maintenance can't
be automated with anything like current technology. If the crew doesn't do
maintenance en route then it will have to be done at the dock, thus taking the
ship out of service and costing more money.

~~~
wlesieutre
Why's it need to pull over? It's in the middle of the ocean. Unless you're a
spaceship it's hard to get any more out of the way.

Presumably you send out a repair crew by boat.

~~~
nradov
No that's not how it works. Disabled ships don't just sit there. The wind and
currents eventually push them into rocks. Disabled ships also present a hazard
to other vessels. Repair boats don't move fast enough to get there in time,
especially in rough weather.

~~~
wlesieutre
How does it work currently? So much redundancy that there's never an unfixable
failure that would stop the ship?

~~~
nradov
Unfixable failures are very rare in critical systems. Usually the crew is able
to catch incipient failures and take preventative action, or else repair the
failure at least well enough to get close to a port. Ships engineers are good
at jury rigging temporary solutions.

There are a few incidents every year where large merchant vessels lose power
and drift onto rocks, or break apart and sink in a storm.

~~~
dredmorbius
There are about ten major shipwrecks annually -- call it one per month:

[http://www.outsideonline.com/1922111/monsterwellen](http://www.outsideonline.com/1922111/monsterwellen)

I'd initially turned up that fact whilst considering the implications of
nuclear propulsion for merchant shipping. I'm considering it not particularly
attractive.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c52ll/shippin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3c52ll/shipping_and_safety_the_nuclear_option/)

------
orbitingpluto
"The U.S. Coast Guard has estimated that human error accounts for up to 96
percent of all marine casualties."

But if we somehow manage to account for 90% of all eventualities when
programming, how are we going to be safer?

------
melling
Prior HN coverage:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14315036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14315036)

------
otto_ortega
I'm interested in taking a shot creating a SaaS business related to the
freight forwarders / containers shipping logistic or similar.

Does anybody here works on that sector and is willing to share some of the
troubles they perceive on the industry that can be solved with software /
machine learning?

~~~
Allvitende
Look into flexport.com they already do this.

------
noir_lord
I would love to work on this kind of software.

It's exactly the type of things I find interesting, it's a shame I didn't make
different career choices when I was younger but it is what it is I guess.

~~~
askafriend
What makes you think you can't work on this type of software?

~~~
noir_lord
I'm 37, I have few academic qualifications so to transition would require 4-5
years more education and then I'd be a 42-43 year old competing against guys
coming straight out of university with a background in desktop and web
application development.

Practicalities really.

------
JohnLeTigre
As guess this would qualify as great news for sea-faring pirates.

~~~
dibujante
Pirates are after hostages, not cargo, generally. It's very hard to crack the
cargo anyways - it's usually stored in a solid steel 20-to-40 foot shipping
container with solid steel lashings bolting everything together. You'd need to
be able to cut through a lot of steel, but then moving the actual cargo itself
would require, well, a large vessel. Selling it would be a very involved
process. All of this puts sea piracy of drone vessels well outside of the
scope of a group of armed men in a motorboat.

Potentially you could also establish measures that make it hard for a human to
get aboard the ship, such as no walkable spaces, or tall fences, now that you
no longer need to accommodate human crew.

~~~
joe_the_user
_It 's very hard to crack the cargo anyways - it's usually stored in a solid
steel 20-to-40 foot shipping container with solid steel lashings bolting
everything together._

The other plan would be go on board and reprogram the ship to go elsewhere,
the nearest deserted coast say, maybe carry the ship's beacons a ways away in
a different direction before dumping them in the sea.

I'm sure if you crash a whole container ship on the coast of Somalia, your
confederates could manage to get money out of the contents.

Edit: Also I recall stories of pirates who hacked container companies to
actually find where the valuable stuff was. And containers are steel but they
aren't designed for any real security.

~~~
dsr_
Ships are trackable by satellite. Photos, I mean; they show up on photos.
Totally passive.

So if you have successfully hijacked a Pacific container ship full of
automobiles bound for Los Angeles... where are you going to dock it? Who does
the offloading? And where do you sell 5500 sedans at once that makes all this
risk worthwhile?

I think that planting remotely controlled explosives and extorting payment
against sinking the cargo is the way to go.

~~~
dredmorbius
It is suprisingly easy to lose track of things in the ocean. Even big things.
Ships. Aircraft.

If the transponders are headed to X whilst the ship is headed to Y, it may
take you a while before you realise that the ship isn't _also_ headed to X. At
which point you now have the problem of determinging which of those fuzzy,
cloud-obscured smudges is your ship, and which is someone else's.

Radar can pick up ships, but it also detects, say, rogue shipping containers,
of which there are a suprisingly large number.

Existing tracking systems rely on AIS transponders:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-28372461](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28372461)

Yes, Google can track ships at sea. But it's _also_ relying on AIS, rather
than imagery:

[http://breakingdefense.com/2012/05/google-satellites-can-
tra...](http://breakingdefense.com/2012/05/google-satellites-can-track-every-
ship-at-sea-including-us-na/)

LA-bound cars might be hard. A shipment bound for the Philippines, or India,
or elswhere along the Indian or South China seas, quite possibly much easier.

------
otempomores
Lets call the sailors mechanics and the ships frail tech in harsh environment.
Suddenly not a good idea.

