The biggest challenges with autonomous costal ferries

Abstract

The aim of this research is to the biggest challenges and benefits with autonomous costal ferries. The material used to get the result is varies articles, books and interviews. This thesis addresses the problems that may accrue when operating an autonomous ship. The study is based as a case study, interviews were carried out on different people that are well understood and has great knowledge about autonomous ships. The study focusses on the problems with autonomous ships. The result of the study and interviews indicates that when operating an autonomous ship, one of the few problems is cyber security, bandwidth, regulations and the transition phase. Trafikverket have around 70 costal ferries, three passage boats and one hovercraft. Trafikverket does not have any plans now to build and operate any autonomous ships but they are open for a discussion to use it on small coastal ferries if the technology develops. In this study we have found that there aren’t that many benefits of sailing autonomous ships in today’s society, but there are some benefits that can be seen as reduced emissions from ships and in turn this means reduced fuel consumption and removing the human factor from ships. Today there are no large commercial autonomous ships, the ships that are being tested and developed are semi-autonomous which mean that there is still a crew onboard if something goes wrong.