Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Autonomous Ships

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 74 posts

Re: Autonomous Ships

#61

Post by hwillis »

Casseres wrote: post #57
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…

Or just get onboard and start smashing stuff until the boat stops. It would be pretty hard to prevent a grapple hook from working (one could imagine automatic water cannons though). Best idea I've got is flexible rods sticking out from the perimeter of the ship to block the hook. The hook gets caught in the rods and when you pull it slides off the end.

It's possible to make doors that are extremely hard to cut through... but they can always just cut through the wall instead.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#62

Post by MurMan »

Casseres wrote: post #55

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,…

I will agree with you that steam or turbine power plants require continuous maintenance. I've got experience, too. :-)

But, read the article. The ship they're talking about is a short-haul transport with battery-electric propulsion. Perfect scenario to pioneer this concept. If it works, I'm betting that it would be possible to create a propulsion plant that will survive longer hauls without a crew.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#63

Post by hwillis »

Casseres wrote: post #55

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,…

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?

Re: Autonomous Ships

#64

Post by nradov »

hwillis wrote: post #63
Casseres wrote: post #55

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,…

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…

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...

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.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#65

Post by icanhackit »

Casseres wrote: post #55

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,…

> Things break and leak all the time, even on new ships.

> [...] a pirate demands a crypto currency payment within X number of hours, or they sink the ship

Based on your response and toomuchtodo's [1] it appears we're trying to automate from the wrong end - we should examine automation of defence/security and maintenance before stripping a ship of its crew.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14363456

Re: Autonomous Ships

#66

Post by sfifs »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #60
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#67

Post by dredmorbius »

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.

With access to electronic manifests, you could program the logistical system to deliver the goods to the destination of your choosing. Which might be easier than piracy.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#68

Post by dredmorbius »

hwillis wrote: post #14
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/

"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 li…

I suspect that the answer more likely lies in the direction of "there's a lot of ships smaller than the Emma Maersk".

Canals, port clearances (bridges, channel depth, width), dockside facilities, etc.., all put limits on ship sizes. There is a whole slew of "max" and other classifications: Panamax, Suezmax, Chinamax, Seawaymax, etc. "Handysize" is still my favourite of the lot.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_ship#Size_categories

For small and local transit, think the US Great Lakes, the Baltic Sea, English Channel, Mediterranean, South Pacific islands (many small populations and ports), and coastal transit along Africa, South America, and Asia, outside the major ports, there's still call for many much smaller ships.

As with other areas, automating smaller instances may be where the payoffs come as the relative labour costs are greater relative to total operating costs. Part of that comes from simple logistics:

* You need multiple shifts. * You need a helmsman, and an engineer, for each shift. * You need a cook, and other housekeeping.

That's already a crew of about 9 - 12.

Regardless of whether your DWT is 20k tonnes or 400k tonnes, your staffing actually doesn't change all that much, and may well increase as smaller ships frequently have (and I presume staff) their own offloading equipment.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#69

Post by svarnypetr »

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).

Another thing are systems like the one done by ATG - planning better routes for ships with multi-agent models. For example the paper Vaněk, Ondřej, Ondřej Hrstka, and Michal Pěchouček. "Improving group transit schemes to minimize negative effects of maritime piracy." IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 15.3 (2014): 1101-1112.

Re: Autonomous Ships

#70

Post by dredmorbius »

nradov wrote: post #56
wlesieutre wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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...

Post reply on HN