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Autonomous Ships

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Re: Autonomous Ships

#51

Post by [deleted] »

LanceH wrote: post #13
dibujante wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pirac…

And no crew that you could threaten to obtain the keys to move freely. Also, an armed rescuing force would have no hostages to worry about.

[deleted]

Re: Autonomous Ships

#52

Post by ThrustVectoring »

dibujante wrote: post #18
LanceH wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And no crew that you could threaten to obtain the keys to move freely. Also, an armed rescuing force would have no hostages to worry about.

No one to threaten to make the ship stop either. There's a fair chance a would-be pirate would end up in Hamburg.

And if they do stop the ship, no point sending in an armed rescue force. Just park a destroyer outside and wait for the pirates to run out of food.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#53

Post by ghaff »

dsr_ wrote: post #38
joe_the_user wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shi…

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 sin…

Sure. As long as you don't care about actually living to spend anything. It's all insured. I'm sure you'll make a memorable example for the next guys with a similar idea.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#54

Post by easilyBored »

chriskanan wrote: post #35

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 als…

With no controls on the ship, pirates wouldn't be able to take control.

20 lbs of C4 in the control and /or engine room might just do it. So they don't take control (ship can be $urrendered later in pristine condition), they do worse.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#55

Post by 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.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#56

Post by nradov »

wlesieutre wrote: post #48
nradov wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#57

Post by Casseres »

chriskanan wrote: post #35

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 als…

> With no controls on the ship, pirates wouldn't be able to take control.

It doesn't matter if there aren't any switches or touch screens. Once someone has access to the engine room and steering gear compartment, all bets are off. They can physically adjust valves to get the ship going where they want it to.

Even if they don't have any tools to gain entrance into the ship, they just have to block the air-intakes and the engines will shut down. If it's battery-powered, they just have to let the ship run over some appropriately-sized lines which will get caught in the propellor and seize the shaft.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#58

Post by easilyBored »

thomasthomas wrote: post #3

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/

Maybe security these days? But they can get ex-special forces soldiers from third world countries for $15k a year. Not sure how it works with visas, being armed while visiting so many ports, insurance and all.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#59

Post by blacksmith_tb »

jdavis703 wrote: post #42
chriskanan wrote: post #35

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 als…

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).

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.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#60

Post by toomuchtodo »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #59
jdavis703 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

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.

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