CARGO and load handling firm MacGregor
is designing "smart" systems that will complement autonomous vessels,
such as its new autonomous bulk handling cranes that the company
showcased at the SMM 2018 conference in Hamburg, Germany.
The company has been developing and
testing the world's first self-learning autonomous discharging cranes
together with ESL Shipping Oy.
MacGregor and its sister companies, Kalmar and Cargotec, are focused on
reducing inefficiencies and waste, like idle time spent waiting in port
which has the potential to reduce a shipment's overall greenhouse gas
footprint and help meet the UN's International Maritime Organisation's
goal to reduce greenhouse gases by 50 per cent from 2008 to 2050.
"Autonomous vessels can be a part of reducing that waste too and we are
very engaged in this effort," MacGregor president Michel van Roozendaal
told Fort Lauderdale's Maritime Executive at the conference.
"If you have an autonomous vessel, but you still need a crewmember to
operate the crane, you still have to make space on board for that
individual. To be fully autonomous these ships will also have to have
autonomous subsystems," he said.
"Autonomous vessels will be a journey. It's not like one day you will
suddenly have a crewless ship sailing from Asia to Europe. It will start
gradually, perhaps with small ferries on defined routes and it will be
tested at a modest scale."
To help the IMO's CO2 targets, autonomous vessels could practice slow
steaming. "At very low speed, less than 10 knots, then you can start to
look at alternative energy sources. This might not work for consumer
goods but for bulk cargoes that are not time sensitive it might be
viable."
He continued: "In the very long term one way to get to a low carbon
footprint would be to return to sail power to move bulk cargoes at low
speed.
"What's most important is a level playing field. If we decide, as
mankind, that we want to ship goods from A to B and we want to do so in a
sustainable way then if everybody plays by these same rules and
everything gets a bit more expensive, we should be prepared to pay for
that."
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