On December 5, the Russian delegation presented autonomous shipping projects at the 109th session of the IMO Maritime Safety Committee, the RF Ministry of Transport said in a statement.
‘Recently, autonomous shipping has been increasingly introduced into the maritime industry. Small research projects are being replaced by real ships (ferries, dry cargo ships, container ships) carrying cargo in remote control mode. The number of such vessels will only increase in the near future. And this requires the development of reliable control and monitoring systems, including autonomous navigation systems, which will be able to maintain the required autonomous mode of vessel operation, assess the quality of its systems, including, among other things, the quality of the autonomous navigation system and the degree of completeness of its functionality,’ the Ministry said.
The Russian delegation presented the development of Russian scientists – a methodology for assessing the quality of decisions made by an autonomous navigation system (ANS). To illustrate its application, a number of key principles of ANS operation were demonstrated, including the modeling of bypassing an unexpectedly detected obstacle on the route in an autonomous mode without the participation of the navigator.
In addition, a video presentation was made by Artem Kurochkin, captain of the first certified Russian autonomous ferry “General Chernyakhovsky”. He described his experience of using such autonomous ship navigation systems on the more than 100,000 nautical miles Ust-Luga – Kaliningrad route.
In conclusion, the Russian party proposed that the Maritime Safety Committee should use the experience of the Russian Federation to develop appropriate Guidelines for assessing the quality and functionality of autonomous navigation systems.
Photo: RF Ministry of Transport