Autonomous vessels: state of the art and potential opportunities in logistics

Abstract

The growth in technology on autonomous transportation systems is currently motivating a number of research initiatives. This paper first presents a survey of the literature on autonomous marine vessels in general. By identifying the main research interests in this field, we define 10 thematic categories. The collected articles are then classified according to these categories. We show that research on autonomous vessels has increased dramatically in the past decade. However, most of the published articles have focused on navigation control and safety issues. Studies regarding other topics, such as transport and logistics, are very limited. Although our main interest is the literature on autonomous vessels, we contrast its development with respect to the literature on autonomous cars so as to have a better understanding about the future potentials in the research on autonomous vessels. The comparison shows that there are great opportunities for research about transportation and logistics with autonomous vessels. Finally, several potential research areas regarding logistics with autonomous vessels are proposed. As the technology behind remote‐controlled or autonomous ships is maturing rapidly, we believe that it is already time for researchers in the field to start looking into future water‐borne transport and logistics using autonomous vessels.

Costs and Benefits of Autonomous Shipping—A Literature Review

“…However, only two papers deal directly with the costs' estimation for autonomous ship operations, as presented below. One document presents literature analysis on selected aspects of autonomous shipping in terms of design, safety, navigation control, and short description of economic issues [39]. The rest of the papers focus on the Liner Shipping Network Design concept [23,40] and vessel platooning concept [41].…”

“…Kretschmann, Burmeister, and Jahn (2017) analyses three different scenarios and compares the indicators with the conventional vessel over 25 years. The first scenario (Scenario A) concerns the aspect of a reduced crew [39]. The expected present value (EPV) is the total cost of owning and operating the ship.…”

“…Then it would be extremely challenging for the vessel to be cost-competitive, unless she would be operated exclusively in SECA zones (Sulphur Emission Control Area). (Scenario A) concerns the aspect of a reduced crew [39]. The expected present value is the total cost of owning and operating the ship.…”

Uncrewed Surface Vessel Technological Diffusion Depends on Cross-Sectoral Investment in Open-Ocean Archetypes: A Systematic Review of USV Applications and Drivers

“…USV uptake is apparently constrained despite scores of commercial prototypes rapidly becoming available (Liu et al, 2016). Suggestions for the slow uptake include low consumer confidence (Costanzi et al, 2020), lagging legal and regulatory frameworks (Campbell et al, 2012;Negoro et al, 2020) and high capital costs of specialised new assets (Gu et al, 2020) where investements have already been made in multiuse flagships. However, there has been no overarching and systematic study to determine what might be limiting this hopeful technology's uptake.…”

Risk assessment of the operations of maritime autonomous surface ships

“…Furthermore, there is a lack of much research on the development of conceptual risk models to analyse the risks in MASS operations. The literature is expanding fast in this emerging area; see for example Gu et al (2020) for a survey of the literature on autonomous marine vessels and Hoem (2019), which updates Porathe et al (2018), for a review of the present and future of risk assessment of MASS. In addition, Fan et al (2020) propose a framework for the identification of factors that influence the navigational risk of MASS and also present a very comprehensive literature review of the area.…”