Rolls-Royce has unveiled its vision of land-based remote control centres that the company believes will enable remote monitoring and control of unmanned ships.
The vision is presented through a 6 minute film, where a crew of seven to fourteen use interactive smart screens, voice recognition systems, holograms and surveillance drones to monitor and control the operation of a fleet of ships across the globe and to understand what is happening both on-board and around the ship. With the increasing likelihood that autonomous ships are to become a reality, remote operation centres are vital to developing autonomous and remote controlled ships that operate safely.
Rolls-Royce General Manager, Remote & Autonomous Operations, Ship Intelligence, Iiro Lindborg believes that unmanned and remote controlled ships are likely to become a“common feature of human life.” Rolls-Royce research aims to understand the human factors involved in monitoring and operating ships remotely, and to ascertain what role the crews on shore have in maintaining safety and smooth operation for ships at sea without an on-board crew.
Furthermore, the Rolls-Royce research demonstrates that although there has been concern within the industry that autonomous ships will reduce the work of seafarers, this is not entirely true. According to Eija Kaasinen, Principal Scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, autonomous ships still need monitoring and control and new kinds of work roles, tasks, tools and environments will be presented. For instance, this vision by Rolls-Royce emphasises the user experience of human operators, focussing on the operators’ points of view to introduce meaningful and engaging new roles for shore control centre professionals.
The film Rolls-Royce has released is the final stage of research that informs the design and construction of a project demonstrator before the end of the decade. The research was undertaken by VTT and University of Tampere research centre TAUCHI (Tampere Unit for Computer Human Interaction) in collaboration with Rolls-Royce. An initiative developed by VTT and Rolls-Royce was used, InnoLeap, which is based on trend and user studies, co-innovation, scenario stories and visualisations.
To view the film, please click here.
