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MAROFF-2-Maritim virksomhet og offsh-2

Autonomous Ship Transport at Trondheimsfjorden

Alternative title: Autonom skipstransport på Trondheimsfjorden

Awarded: NOK 4.4 mill.

Project Number:

269557

Project Period:

2017 - 2019

In order to transfer more cargo from road to sea, it is interesting to look at the possibility of using completely unmanned and relatively small vessels to establish new low-cost and flexible transport systems in Norwegian fjords and in sheltered water along the coast. These can also be connected to continental routes and provide higher speed and lower cost for the larger ships that cover the coast and down to the continent. The smaller ships can be used to deliver and pick up cargo much closer to the customers. Overall, this provides a much better service to customers, that can better compete against trucks, both at long and medium distances. The ASTAT project investigates such a transport system for short and medium distance transport between main terminals for coastal ships and smaller harbors and quays around Trondheimsfjorden. This is sheltered water with relatively little traffic that is well suited for this type of transport system. The concept has been presented several places abroad and it is obvious that similar solutions can be used in many places other than Norway, including on inland waterways on the continent. This also means that there is a great export potential in technology and operational solutions to realize this system. The project has also looked at more local bulk transport of timber and gravel. Here is a main problem high and increasing age on the fleet and the difficulty in obtaining sufficient capital to renew it to follow current emission and environmental standards. An important element of ASTAT is therefore to look at the capital and operating costs of such new transport systems, especially when considering possible savings in other parts of the logistics than the actual ship leg. Here are great opportunities for savings and this is probably necessary to provide a complete business model that allows renewal of the fleet so that we can avoid large volumes of bulk transport being transferred from sea to the road network.

Kunnskap fra ASTAT er brukt som grunnlag for prosjektering av ny tømmerkai på Orkanger, i regi av Trondheim Havn, men med 21 mill kr i tømmerkaimidler fra Statsbudsjettet i 2018 ASTAT har vist at ubemannede skip kan være lønnsomme, dette kan gi flere realiseringsprosjekter. Resultater tas med inn i prosjekter som startet og starter i 2019. Maritime Robotics har nytt forretningsområde: "Transportation", samarbeid med Rakuten og er i gang med autonom sunbåt i Kristiansund.

Autonomy is seen as a possibility for maritime transport to meet today's and tomorrow's competitiveness, safety and sustainability challenges [1]. On the waterways, autonomous ships and barges are emerging as ideas all over Europe. This is a rapid development where Norway also needs to speed up. Fully unmanned short sea ships can significantly increase competitiveness of waterborne traffic over trucks and by that reduce pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transport. A fully unmanned ship also has significant safety benefits and will reduce GHG emissions also compared to manned ships with the same capacity. The project proposal is to do a design and concept study, exploiting SINTEF' experience from the MUNIN and SEATONOMY projects on autonomous system development, together with the partners knowledge of ship, components and business case designs, to develop a transport system based on a fully unmanned vessel. The project will also improve the SEATONOMY method so that it can provide the necessary documentation for more rapid approval of the vessel. The extension and the verification of the methodology will be done in cooperation with authorities (Kystverket and Sjøfartsdirektoratet) to make sure that the method can actually be applied also in Norwegian rule making and approval procedures and that the design method can produce documentation that can simplify the approval procedures. The expected outcome of the two-year project is a ship and business case design, a cost-benefit analysis and a plan for approval of the ship once it is built. This will be sufficient background for launching a full scale development and deployment project over the following three years with commercial backing. The project is organised in 7 main activities: 1)Business case development 2)Ship design 3)Port design 4)Safety and cost benefit analysis 5)1)Overarching coordination activity for running interative development process and 6)Project management.

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Funding scheme:

MAROFF-2-Maritim virksomhet og offsh-2