
Rolls-Royce is designing drone ships to challenge $375B freight industry - noonespecial
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-25/rolls-royce-drone-ships-challenge-375-billion-industry-freight.html
======
mbrubeck
This is interesting because cargo ships are more fuel-efficient at slow speeds
[1][2]. But with a crewed ship, slow speed means higher labor costs. I wonder
how much remote piloting or auto-piloting of ultra-slow ships can change this
equation.

[1]
[http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch8en/conc8en/fuel_co...](http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch8en/conc8en/fuel_consumption_containerships.html)

[2] [http://ultraslowships.com/](http://ultraslowships.com/)

~~~
aaron695
I find it unlikely labour costs make much of a difference compared to cargo
being delayed on slow ships.

I would be more along the lines of, labour free ships don't go on strike/have
HR incidents and delay cargo.

~~~
qq66
Ships actually use very precise algorithms to calculate the relative cost of
labor vs. inventory getting delayed, using factors like the depreciation of
the cargo, the spot price of fuel, and even changing interest rates in the
market.

Oil tankers in the middle of the ocean, for example, will speed up and slow
down as spot prices of oil increase or short-term interest rates decrease,
since the inventory cost of their cargo has gone up and then down.

~~~
el_benhameen
That's absolutely fascinating. Do you have a source for further reading on
those optimizations? I haven't been able to find anything with a bit of
googling.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Unfortunately, most of the papers I found by googling are behind paywalls :(

~~~
v3rt
I for one would still appreciate a link - I think those of us on academic
networks should be able to see most papers behind paywalls

~~~
toomuchtodo
Google for "oil tanker algorithms"

------
jisaacks
I can only image the frustration of someone lost at sea watching one of these
slowly drift right passed them and no way to get on board and no crew to
signal for help.

~~~
hangonhn
I imagine that some sort of radio beacon receiver can be attached to these
drone ships and with enough of them traveling the seas, it might actually
increase the chances of finding survivors.

~~~
josephschmoe
Or even just cover them with cameras on the outside. When something
interesting happens, like a ship passing by or a human being waving their arms
in the waves, it will alert somebody who can take a closer look and possibly
alert the coast guard/navy.

~~~
electromagnetic
They'll be covered with cameras on the outside, unmanned boats would be way
too easy targets for piracy. You wouldn't even have to sneak aboard, just get
aboard and find the expensive cargo. Set off a bomb in the engine room and
then unload what you can in a reasonably safe time before someone can get
close and track you. It could potentially make piracy more viable in currently
safe areas.

You'd want cameras to track when anything even remotely in sight is moving
unexpectedly. Anything coming close would be reported to the coast guard/navy.

There'll be heavy monitoring on these ships, even just for liability issue in
case some dumb guy in a yacht sails right into them and tried to sue.

------
dsr_
When the ship is not near shore, there's no doubt in my mind that it is safer
in the hands of an automated pilot.

It's only when things get crowded and unpredictable -- that is, with lots of
non-automated shipping about -- where you will need serious piloting software.
I imagine that there will be a long crossover period where ships will set out
from a port with a small human crew -- possibly just a pilot and lookouts --
then go autonomously across the ocean to be picked up by another small crew a
few hours out from the destination port.

~~~
Someone
Many larger ports require larger ships to use a pilot who is familiar with the
port near the coast. See for example
[http://www.mpa.gov.sg/sites/port_and_shipping/port/pilotage_...](http://www.mpa.gov.sg/sites/port_and_shipping/port/pilotage_and_towage/exemption_from_pilotage/general_information.page),
[http://www.pla.co.uk/Pilotage/About-the-PLA-s-Pilotage-
Servi...](http://www.pla.co.uk/Pilotage/About-the-PLA-s-Pilotage-Service), or
[http://www.loodswezen.nl/en/home/1593/](http://www.loodswezen.nl/en/home/1593/)

That system could stay as-is if the normal crew would be automated away.

~~~
dredmorbius
You'd still need some sort of pilothouse in that situation, which would tend
to negate some of the clear-deck design benefits.

There's also the question of who's going to deploy (and untangle) the boarding
ladder that pilots use to get aboard vessels. As well as the prospects of
hacking _that_ subsystem in order to divert the vessel.

[http://fixyt.com/watch?v=bcSCNFJDy6Y](http://fixyt.com/watch?v=bcSCNFJDy6Y)

[http://fixyt.com/watch?v=UT05TYaQV8w](http://fixyt.com/watch?v=UT05TYaQV8w)

~~~
darkmighty
Well that's easy you do some sort of authenticated deployment, with a system
more secure than the one shown.

~~~
dredmorbius
Watch those videos.

Now design me an automated deployment system which can handle the operating
conditions and environment, and respond, effectively, as good or better than a
human can.

Consider that your ladder can get snagged, caught, swing in the wind or seas,
collect flotsam or jetsam, etc. Things can get very squirrely at sea.

Sometimes humans aren't _the best_ at a _specific_ function, but through
processing and manipulation capabilities, including the ability to use and
apply multiple other tools, they're the best means for responding to a general
case of circumstances which cover a lot of ground.

~~~
darkmighty
I'd say _specifically_ this case doesn't seem very safe to me. For example you
could have a rope attach to some rod on the boat, then you could use that rope
to attach some climbing device. Of course, the rope has to be lowered slowly
and the receptacle must be large so there isn't much to miss.

Not hard to imagine something better than jumping to a ladder on the side of
the boat to be honest.

------
AnthonyMouse
I'm kind of surprised we haven't heard more about self-driving trucks. There
is a lot more labor to be saved by removing one truck driver from each of the
20 ton trucks that deliver the cargo to the port than a dozen crew from a
10,000 ton container ship.

~~~
WalterBright
Trains do that.

It's ludicrous that there are so many long haul trucks on the interstates. The
containers ought to be on trains, and trucks used for the 'last mile'. This
would save on labor, fuel, maintenance, and roads. (Most road damage is from
heavy trucks.)

The reason this doesn't happen is because of the tax and subsidy structure
that heavily favors trucking over rail.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The reason this doesn't happen is because of the tax and subsidy structure
> that heavily favors trucking over rail.

The reason for the tax and subsidy structure is the Teamsters. So self-driving
trucks are how you get back to using rail. First replace the truck drivers
with computers, then when there is nobody left to lobby against it, replace
the trucks with rail.

------
mkmk
There is a fascinating (if somewhat dry) book about the emergence of shipping
containers and the freight industry called 'The Box: How the Shipping
Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger' I enjoyed it.
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Box-Shipping-Container-
Smaller/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Box-Shipping-Container-
Smaller/dp/0691136408)

------
droithomme
This sounds like something a company that had never been at sea in the open
ocean would announce in order to capitalize on the faddishness of the word
"drone".

The crew on freighters is already minimalist and isn't necessary to steer the
ship in flat windless seas with no weather. They are there to clean it, keep
the engine running, and deal with things that happen because of weather.

Saying you are going to get rid of the crew is like saying you are going to
get rid of the guys who do robot maintenance and repair at a highly automated
automobile plant.

~~~
dredmorbius
From TFA: "While the idea of automated ships was first considered decades ago,
Rolls-Royce started developing designs last year. Marine accounts for 16
percent of the company’s revenue, data compiled by Bloomberg show."

RR have marine experience.

~~~
Casseres
I believe they just make engines and other machinery. There's a difference
between a company that makes a steering wheel and a company that employes a
fleet of drivers to drive it's fleet of trucks.

~~~
roel_v
Let me get this straight, you're saying that f'n _Rolls Royce_ doesn't have
the engineering chops to assess the viability of future tech developments?

Additionally, you're saying that f'n ROLLS ROYCE builds the equivalent of
'steering wheels' in machinery?

~~~
dredmorbius
Someone who hops onto a thread in which someone has been dressed down for an
utter failure to verify facts from an article with further utter lack of
research isn't worth the time.

------
dredmorbius
The article covers many of the predictable objections or challenges: safety,
union reception (both sailors and dockworkers, crew costs (up to 44% of
containership operations), though harbor pilots would be another), the
International Maritime Organization (IMO), regulations, computer hacking,
piracy (and ransoming of both crew and cargo).

I see particular challenges being:

• Small craft safety. There are already considerable concerns among pleasure
craft and other small-craft sailors for collisions with commercial shipping
traffic.

• At-sea mishaps including load shifts and loss of cargo. Containers _do_ fall
off ships regularly, as many as 10,000 per year. Hull-strikes with derelict
containers are another small-craft concern:
[http://www.worldshipping.org/industry-
issues/safety/Containe...](http://www.worldshipping.org/industry-
issues/safety/Containers_Overboard__Final.pdf)

• Harbor safety. As with autonomous cars, it's one thing to operate in the
largely predictable waters of the high seas, another to navigate a complex and
highly trafficked harbor or near-shore waters. If crew were required for such
passages, the superstructure elimination benefits would be lost.

There's nothing about automation which doesn't preclude _augmentation_ of
crewed vehicles for a best-of-both-worlds experience. Crew sizes could
possibly be reduced, though not eliminated.

Large cargo vessels typically have a 20+ year life. Don't expect any rapid
deployment of this technology, though as with other automation, fixed-course
or closed-course applications (canals, closed harbors) might see some initial
use.

------
jeremyt
Did anyone else read this and think that it might be a good way to do away
with piracy also? If there's no steering wheel to grab a hold of, there's no
way to steal the ship, and with an absence of hostages, it would be a lot
easier to deal with attempted theft, too.

~~~
carbocation
And, with a ship unattended, there is nobody to impede your progress as you
carve through the side of the ship and start offloading prize cargo.

~~~
smm2000
Pirates usually do not have capacity to offload ship - they use small fishing
boats and speedboats that won't hold even one container. Cargo in most
containers is not very valuable (who need container of t-shirts 600 miles away
from closest shore?). Finding container with valuables (IPhones/etc) is
difficult as there is no accessible manifest on the ship and opening
containers is time-consuming.

I also assume that boat will automatically inform authorities and
navy/security will be able to reach ship in a matter of hours. With no
hostages on container ship, security can just blow up fishing boat/speed boat
pirates used and then wait until they run out of food/water on a container
ship. Pirates won't be able to control engine/rudder so there is not much they
can do other than to surrender.

------
Theodores
Can anyone think of a peace-time disaster at sea that was not as a result of
human error? Titanic? Exxon Valdez? Costa Concordia? The 'humans are critical
for safety' argument is flawed when we don't know how well robot ships will
do.

Sail augmented with solar needs to make a comeback before we run out of oil,
it would be cool if ships just found there own way around the globe, safely
crew-less.

~~~
mickeyp
I don't know anything about the maritime world, but playing Devil's Advocate
you're suffering from selection bias: you're naming instances where humans
_caused_ the errors but not factoring in the unreported instances of humans
_saving_ the cargo, the ship, the personnel or all three.

------
31reasons
So in automated vehicles industry it looks like shipping jobs are the first
ones to go. Ships definitely has less navigation complexity than terrain
vehicles and longer response times than cars, so deployment and operations of
the captain-less ships could be less riskier. If I were working as a crew
member its time to jump the shipping!

EDIT: I take my words back. The jobs are not going anywhere because of this :
"The International Transport Workers’ Federation, the union representing about
600,000 of the world’s more than 1 million seafarers, is opposed."

~~~
dredmorbius
Controlling an automobile is largely a matter of _reaction_ and responding to
circumstances.

Piloting a ship is a matter of _strategy_. You've got a vessel of hundreds of
thousands of tonnes, a half kilometer or more long, with a stopping distance
measured in kilometers, to which you can add or reduce energy (velocity)
and/or change course only gradually, moving through a fluid which is itself in
motion, often with rapidly changing currents changing direction and speed in
only a few meters, through waves exceeding 30m in height, frequently operating
in total darkness with few if any route markers, or in fog so thick there's no
visibility past a few meters -- you cannot see the boundaries of your vessel
let alone other ships or navigational hazards.

And that's _with_ modern navigational aids. Consider sailing vessels up
through the 1800s which traveled without any artificial light stronger than an
oil lantern.

As recently as 1923, _seven of a squadron of fourteen US Navy vessels sailed
at flank speed into well-known and charted rocks at the north end of the Santa
Barbara Channel_. In the Honda Point disaster, seven destroyers traveling at
20 knots (37 km/h) ran aground. Two other ships grounded but managed to work
free. Twenty-three sailors were killed.

Radio navigation was available and installed but not trusted. Sailing by dead
reckoning in a heavy fog, the squadron commander ordered a course change too
early and lead his fleet into the rocks.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Point_Disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Point_Disaster)

~~~
31reasons
Some of the problems you are mentioning are already solved by airline
industry. How can an airplane fly on autopilot mode in a heavy fog conditions
? Radars and satellite navigation.

And the disasters you've mentioned seems like most happened due to errors in
human judgement. A machine can take lot of information at a very high rate and
make decisions that are similar if not better than humans.

~~~
dredmorbius
Aircraft operational environments tend to include far fewer navigational
hazards (though drone proliferation could change this).

Aircraft final-approach zones are very tightly controlled. Any idiot, or even
a dumb lump of wood, can float through the water.

Not all that long ago: rowing through a local harbor (a transport mode in
which one faces sternwards and periodically checks over the shoulder for
hazards) I managed to spot a large timber likely broken from a pier. Perhaps
0.3-0.6 meters across and 7-8 meters long, with an iron spike or bolt some 30
cm long protruding from one end. I passed only 3-4 meters from it. A week or
so later another boat in our fleet struck a piece of driftwood and suffered a
hull puncture (fortunately just above waterline).

Timber, lumber, telephone poles, and other hazards are frequent in water. They
can be significant hazards not only for small craft but for larger vessels
with fiberglass, wood, or even steel hulls. It's rare for an aircraft to
encounter a tree at 10,000m.

Yes, human error _is_ a significant factor in many disasters, but human
response is also frequently a factor in _surviving_ disasters. This is
particularly the case where automated or navigational inputs turn out to be
erroneous.

The Air France 447 incident is an interesting case study in this: a design
flaw (pitot tube) lead to an operational obstruction (pitot-tube icing)
resulting in loss of navigational data (airspeed), causing automated
navigational systems to disengage (autopilot disconnect) and fly-by-wire
systems to reconfigure to alternate-law mode, crew failures in supplying
inputs, following loss-of-airspeed-indication procedures, and responding to
flight-path deviation, lack of proper crew response to stall, attempted dual
control of aircraft by both co-pilot and captain (Marc Dubois). Compounding
all of this was the question of what instrumentation and alerts to trust
(airspeed, stall, altitude). _Something_ was lying, but _what_ wasn't clear.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447)

And all of that in skies with inclement weather but no specific fixed or
floating navigational hazards to worry about.

~~~
dredmorbius
One more point on the AF 447 incident: _sidestick control interface which
failed to provide feedback for inputs supplied by the other pilot_. Dubois was
attempting to correct the aircraft's attitude but was frustrated in this by
the copilot's erroneous control inputs. The flight control systems averaged
the inputs.

Fail.

------
CHY872
So, they're saying it cannot possibly be cost effective, with a global fleet
of around 5000 ships, and conservative savings of at least $3000 per day per
ship? It cannot be cost effective to develop a product for which the savings
would be at least $5 billion per year (of which most can be claimed back in
more expensive ships)? Sounds like at least a few people are trying to
maintain the status quo already.

~~~
dredmorbius
$5 billion on $375 billion is a 1.3% savings, with considerable technological,
social, political, and other risks.

Seems that there's an argument toward more automation, but a full adoption of
the technology to the extent described in the article strikes me as unlikely,
and could well have downside costs well in excess of the claimed benefits.

~~~
vidarh
The potential savings are substantially larger. The article cites a 12%-15%
reduced fuel use, as well as increased cargo capacity from losing the bridge.

~~~
dredmorbius
I was simply contextualizing CHY872's claimed savings.

The stated crew savings should account for a sizable chunk at 44% of operating
expenses, unless capital expenses are an even larger share. I don't know the
numbers and the article doesn't supply them.

------
bane
Some thoughts:

Crew on ships seems to be of two classes (I know nothing about shipping be
warned!)

1) Direct crew: captain, engineer, etc.

2) Support for the direct crew: Ship's doctor, cook etc.

To eliminate #2, you basically have to eliminate #1 (or get #1 so small and
with so many free hours in the day that somebody can dual-hat and handle
cooking for whoever's left or even for themselves. Getting rid of decent
medical care might be tough though.

So let's look at the ship's engineer. Supposedly, there's a reason there's an
engineer on board a ship, things break down and need maintenance on a voyage.
So automated or no automation, it seems like he's still going to be needed. If
he's not, why hasn't that role (and his team) already been eliminated as a
labor cost? Not even Star Trek figured out a way to automate away the engineer
on a large ship. Smaller vessels don't need an engineer aboard, but their
voyage time at sea is shorter, so the "ship's engineer" role is relegated to a
land-based job and split across several vessels - we call these guys mechanics
when dealing with cars.

Here's a video of a container ship engine room
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41priD5GJyY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41priD5GJyY)
It looks pretty automated today, yet there's still a ship's engineer aboard. I
bet that the equation is _spend a few hundred dollars a day on a guy or risk
losing hundreds of millions of dollars of cargo because the automated system
had a fault on a fuel pump or something._

But I suppose you could start splitting duty across ships, have an engineer
basically helicopter around to ships to do inspections and solve limited
issues. But how many ships does an engineer have to fly around to to make up
the cost difference of having him flown around vs just having guys on board?

What about the captain? Out at sea a ship can basically go on a kind of
autopilot today.
[https://www.yokogawa.com/ydk/mr/marine/pilot/products/ydkmr-...](https://www.yokogawa.com/ydk/mr/marine/pilot/products/ydkmr-
ma-pt500-en.htm) Better integration with GPS, charts and real-time weather and
piracy rerouting data I guess could make blue water sailing a reality. But
coastal sailing, docking, berthing, towing, and other complex navigation
functions are pretty complex operations. FTA it sounds like they intend a
land-based captain to remote control the vessels, but I suppose a system where
they navigate to an offshore location and are towed in or a docking captain in
flown in to "park" the ship could work. I believe something like this happens
with canal transit.

I'm assuming there's other direct crew on board, probably with similar issues.
For the support crew, as soon as the numbers of the direct crew go to zero,
they all disappear...fast. But suppose they don't then you'll need two 12 hour
or three 8 hour shifts of people.

Let's minimize it and say there's a captain, first mate (backup guy),
engineer. Then 3 shifts we'll have 9 people. We'll need a cook for each shift,
so we're at 12 people. Add in a doctor and a laundry/room (steward) cleaning
person and we're at 14 people. It turns out most container ships have between
15-24 crew, so it doesn't seem I'm too far off.
[https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100924203011A...](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100924203011AA4Pn7h)

The Xin Los Angeles has 19 crew and it's the most heavily automated, largest
container ship at the time of launch in 2006.
[http://www.gizmag.com/go/5853/](http://www.gizmag.com/go/5853/)

Not a container ship, but a bulk goods ship can have dozens of crew (I suppose
the cargo handling is more complex)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulk_carrier#Crew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulk_carrier#Crew)

    
    
       1 - Captain
    
       Deck Department:
       1 - Chief Officer
       1 - 2nd Officer
       1 - 3rd Officer
       1 - Boatswain
       2-6 - Able Seamen
       0-2 - Ordinary Seamen
    
       Engines:
       1 - Chief Engineer
       1 - 1st Asst Eng.
       1 - 2nd Asst Eng.
       1-2 - 3rd Asst Engr.
       0-2 - Jr. Eng.
       1-3 - Oiler
       0-3 - Greaser
       1-3 - Entry Level
    
       Steward:
       1 - Chief Steward
       1 - Cook
       1 - Asst.
    

With crew costs being such a significant portion of ship cost, I'd guess that
automating away these folks as quickly as possible would be in order. Shipping
companies aren't stupid and they replace and buy new ships all the time. It
seems to me that we're still quite a ways away from eliminating altogether.

~~~
larrys
"What about the captain? Out at sea a ship can basically go on a kind of
autopilot today."

There is for sure a certain feel to boating. Although I have never obviously
operated a boat of this size I have owned smaller boats and depending on sea
conditions there is judgement in play that can't be offset by technology and
especially an actual human with seat of the pants feel and judgement. That
said it might be possible if the operator was literally in some kind of
simulator and able to sense things in a similar way (although you wouldn't
have smell or the feel of the air).

This idea though might cut it's teeth in a smaller area perhaps some kind of
shuttle between two close ports as opposed to the open ocean or something like
a water conveyor by ship.

~~~
pivo
> there is judgement in play that can't be offset by technology and especially
> an actual human with seat of the pants feel and judgement.

I thought the same thing at first, but I then I thought that a) These ships
are too big and slow to be agile enough to respond to the kind of seat-of-the-
pants type navigation I'm familiar with and, and b) I'm sure people said the
same things about driverless cars.

------
andrest
The maintenance crew is still needed to keep the engines running. It's just
that it can be piloted remotely. This, however, is nothing new technologically
speaking. We could very well take away pilots from commercial airliners but it
will never happen, or not soon enough. Because a human in control gives a nice
illusion of safety.

When it comes to freighters, the cost of a captain or even a crew is
negligible. It pales in comparison to the cost of the ship and the goods it
carries. Also, insurance companies would not go down well with this.

~~~
vidarh
It's just a question of time before a ship with a human captain will become
uninsurable because the automated alternative is deemed safer.

It only seems prudent for a company like Rolls Royce whose marine division
includes a substantial amount of ship automation and ship design to invest R&D
resources into ensuring they're on the forefront of that development.

------
ShabbyDoo
Most of the comments here presume that it's unacceptable for a drone ship to
break down in the middle of the ocean and be without crew to repair it. What
if these ships were designed so that nothing too awful would happen if they
floated around in the middle of the ocean for awhile awaiting another ship
with a human crew to perform repairs. Or, maybe another drone ship or two to
tow a broken one back to land?

My understanding of container shipping is that customers make SLA choices much
akin to us Americans choosing between UPS Ground/2nd Day Air/Next Day, etc.
UPS uses these varied SLAs to smooth out its use of fleet capacity and for
price discrimination. Shippers operate transshipment ports as part of
distribution networks much like the hub & spoke designs of the major airlines.
These ports have a bunch of shipping containers sitting around awaiting
capacity.

Consider the needs of companies that must transport low-value, high
weight/bulk cargo. These companies likely already choose the "UPS Ground"
equivalent for container shipping. Due to low product value, inventory costs
are low (in transit goods are inventory), so it's probably less expensive to
have buffers of goods in the supply chain than it is to pay for tight shipping
SLAs. Why should these companies care if the variance they experience in
shipping duration is due to capacity constraints of manned-ships or that it
took an extra two weeks to fix the ship upon which their cargo was in transit?

~~~
LeChuck
It very far from certain that a ship without propulsion will just stay afloat
for a while. Even big ships can disappear in a hurry if the weather's bad
enough.

See for example the sinking of the Derbyshire.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tN4xROtMjI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tN4xROtMjI)

------
dang
Url changed from [http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/pirates-eat-heart-rolls-
ro...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/pirates-eat-heart-rolls-royce-
envisions-crewless-drone-freight-ships/), which points to this. Title edited
to make clear that these are designs.

~~~
noonespecial
It was a good change. I knew there'd be a better less blog-spammy version but
my google-fu failed me tonight. This is one case where the mods are right on
the mark and I thank them.

~~~
fhars
You might have tried the search box at the bottom of this page, it would have
found
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7297750](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7297750)
and some others that didn't attract many comments.

~~~
dang
When a story is good and hasn't had significant attention yet, a small number
of reposts is ok. We want good stories to have multiple cracks at the bat.

------
richardw
Make a ship that is automated, give it a crew and wait. Keep fixing things
that the computer can't. When you stop doing that, wait. After a decade
without incident, remove the crew.

Don't put oil on it until the data proves it's safer.

------
josephschmoe
Aside from maybe lost comms, I don't see much of a difference between
captaining a ship locally versus remotely.

~~~
prawn
With remotely controlled ships, the freight company could use a set of shift
workers to control multiple ships at a given time rather than need a team on
every ship. I imagine that a fair bit of captaining a ship would be sitting
around too, so allocating multiple craft to one captain could work.

Support staff (cook, doctor, etc) wouldn't be required either.

Space devoted to all that could instead go towards cargo.

------
hyp0
It's like a parallel universe, captains can go and sail the world during the
day and still go to parties in the evening

------
jackhammons
How would drone ships pollute less than current solutions?

------
hosh
I would be interested to see how they'll deal with pirates.

------
omilu
why design a new ship, just mod an existing ship and done. the
floating/propulsion part needs no modifications

------
gdilla
pirates are gonna love this.

~~~
Zigurd
Only if they want to go where the ship is programmed to go.

~~~
josefresco
Or offload the cargo and be on their way...

~~~
Phlarp
Onto what? The inflatable they came in?

~~~
josefresco
Maybe, or maybe the pirates will evolve to use larger ships capable of
offloading cargo once these robo-ships become standard.

The thought of a few guys on a small skiff taking over a massive container
ship was pretty absurd not too long ago but yet we see it happening more and
more due to the financial incentive.

If the cargo stolen is worth it, they'll find a way.

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EGreg
Now THIS is a good idea!

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aves
Wait, are you saying that cargo ships aren't unmanned already?

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trhway
new kind of piracy - cyber-piracy. Hijacking ship without getting up from
couch. The Somali pirates will also need to adapt as after getting the ship
boarded they would need to find control room and the actual connector to
connect to to change the ship's direction, speed ...

