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Could you have autonomous ships this size, like a waymo for the ocean?
by adriand 11mo ago
Could you have autonomous ships this size, like a waymo for the ocean?
- gtowey 11mo agoWhat would be the point? Ships are complex machines and the ocean is an incredibly harsh and unforgiving environment. You would need crew to simply maintain the ship while underway and fix things that break (which pretty much always happens). Next, these ships can be downright dangerous for other, smaller ships. It has happened before that large cargo ships have killed people on sailboats when they didn't keep an adequate lookout. I wouldn't trust an autonomous system to have enough accuracy to avoid running over other boats.
- jopsen 11mo agoAlso if the ship is large enough to send economically feasible, the value of the cargo is so huge that a few crew won't affect the bill.
- hgomersall 11mo agoThere are plenty of reports of crews being overworked and underslept, so clearly some shipping companies still cut corners as regards staffing.
- mmooss 11mo agoI read about the US Navy's work on autonomous ships. One big challenge is the lack maintenance. Sailors can perform periodic and break-fix maintenance throughout the journey, and if something unpredictable happens, they can handle it. The autonomous vessels need far higher robustness, not only to function without maintenance for months at a time, but reliably enough that few of them end up lost or stranded at sea.
- BurningFrog 11mo agoYeah, you may not need a crew to steer the ship, but it's far more effective to do maintenance while it's moving cargo than while it's doing nothing in a port.