WHEN automation is mentioned, most people are immediately transported to a sci-fi future when robots rule, cars fly, and crewless ships sail the world.

Even within maritime, it is often forgotten that ‘unmanned vessel’ isn’t the only arrow in the automation quiver. In fact, smart autonomous solutions are already solving shipping challenges such as decarbonisation, overcapacity, safety, and human error. This results in fewer onboard and onshore accidents, significant fuel savings, reduced emissions, efficient operations, and better ship designs. 

Wärtsilä Voyage calls this ‘Smart Autonomy’ — a commercially viable, step-by-step application of intelligent tools such as situational awareness that creates immediate and quantifiable operational value, and opens a pathway to greater future vessel autonomy.

Wärtsilä Voyage business development manager Dr Sasha Heriot emphasises that smarter sensors’ benefits do not lie in the distant future of crewless vessels. “Smart sensor technology already supports crews in routine manoeuvres.” They help achieve operational effectiveness and safety, especially in busy ports and waterways, where incidents are most common.

Digital eyes for enhanced awareness

Data shows 80%-90% of vessel casualties are rooted in human error. Considering the scale of modern operations — the distances vessels travel and the traffic they encounter — effective watchkeeping can be a challenge even for the most competent crew. Situations that surpass human capabilities can utilise situational awareness.

Their unique pairing of sensor tech (such as radars, lasers, and cameras) with navigation systems creates a complete digital picture of a vessel’s maritime environment, to identify potential hazards.

Such enhanced situational awareness enables safer manoeuvring in ports and harbours, effective navigation through crowded waterways, hazardous target identification and environmental monitoring. Smart sensors on tugs and ferries inform decision-making, mitigating the effects of poor visibility, and eliminating radar blind spots.

However, smart sensors do not replace leadership, experience, or intuition. Rather, they compensate for the human factors that increase risk. Sensors do not get tired or lose concentration, they look in all directions simultaneously and they can raise an alert if they detect a potential hazard, or the vessel position unexpectedly deviates from its course.

Going beyond GNSS

Where human senses end and GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) fails, these smart sensor technologies fill the gap and help crew take informed decisions and prevent casualties.

For example, night vision cameras, LIDAR (light detecting and ranging), and short-range high-resolution radar provide digital vision in conditions where humans are blind. These sensors’ 360° view around the vessel eliminates blind spots so crew can understand their immediate surroundings when docking, and for safety manoeuvres. In other applications, high-resolution radar and high accuracy laser sensors are used to detect and identify objects at different distances from the vessel, to optimise navigation route selection.

In addition to monitoring what is happening around the vessel, onboard situational awareness is integrated with real-time navigational systems, making operational decision-making more seamless, increasing efficiency, and making shipping safer.

“A well-balanced modern sensor suite has to have matching processing power capability also at the edge (on the vessel), transforming signals into structured information. The development in the past few years of machine learning techniques close to embedded systems goes beyond the maritime world, both on the software and hardware level,” explains Pierre Guillemin, Vice-President Technology, Wärtsilä Voyage.

“It helps our ecosystem to benefit from these massive investments and accelerate our maritime specific needs. Understanding a wide array of sensor modalities and coherently fusing the information are crucial steps to enable true situational awareness. These steps are fundamentals in creating a coherent picture of the surrounding world and ultimately, a better user experience.”

Awareness in action

Singapore’s first commercial autonomous tug, IntelliTug, has been a working example of situational awareness. It is equipped with advanced sensors and positioning technologies, including Automatic Identification System (AIS), global positioning system (GPS), thermal and daylight video cameras, an AIS receiver, a motion reference unit and Wärtsilä’s advanced RS24 radar.

Chris Chung, Wärtsilä’s Director, Digital Innovation and Strategic Projects, says while IntelliTug has explored the move towards autonomous vessels, a core focus was on reducing the risk of accidents, particularly in ports, by eliminating blind spots around the vessel.

“Busy ports, especially in Asia, are used by a lot of smaller vessels that do not have AIS. There is also a risk of grounding the vessel or hitting dropped containers and other objects.

"This increases overall accuracy because not all radars work effectively in the rain, for example, and different cameras are used for day and night vision. Bringing together multiple detection capabilities creates a clearer picture of the vessel’s environment,” says Chung.

Digitising the maritime environment

Situational awareness also provides computer systems with the data required to enable autonomous processes.

This data is used to train maritime AI (Artificial Intelligence) in object recognition and detection. AI enables differentiation between larger and smaller vessels, especially in harbours and ports, where larger ships are severely limited in speed and manoeuvrability compared with smaller, more agile crafts. AI is also beneficial in open navigation, where it tracks objects, identifies collision risks, enhances navigation, and reduces costs.

American Steamship Company’s American Courage provides an example of situational awareness sensors working in tandem with navigational systems for semi-autonomous ship movement. With cargo-carrying capacity of 24,300 gt, it is the largest ship to perform an automatic dock-to-dock operation — in the challenging waterways of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, US.

Named the Crooked River by indigenous Americans, the narrow, winding, and heavily congested waterway was the testbed for Wärtsilä SmartMove Suite. The vessel used the industry’s most advanced sensors and high-accuracy ship control systems, advancing the concept of automated dock-to-dock operations to the next level.

“The complete Voyage Smart technology package addresses the American Courage’s restricted water manoeuvring profile requirements, including a position margin of less than two metres and transit under bridges. The technology utilises the surrounding environment for vessel positioning, making it ship-based rather than onshore. The resulting impact was a further reduction of the American Courage’s operating costs,” explains Pierre Pelletreau, VP of Engineering, Rand-ASC Holdings LLC.

“This is not about going captain-free, rather, enhancing the capabilities of the onboard crew as they traverse shuttle routes, congested or restricted areas. When vessels must operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we are pleased to offer an automated dock-to-dock transit solution that ensures every trip is conducted safely,” adds John J Marshall, Senior Business Development Manager, Automation & DP, Americas, Wärtsilä Voyage.

The IntelliTug project, American Courage and other applications show how situational awareness and smart autonomy technologies can create a safer work environment. Complete vessel autonomy may be a distant vision for some in shipping, but the solution to reduce human limitations with technologies that augment and enhance the crew’s capabilities is already available.

Pierre Guillemin, Vice-President Technology, Wärtsilä Voyage, will be a speaker at the live streamed Lloyd’s List webinar: How to Digitalise Shipping on March 17. Register for the webinar here.