World’s first crewless, zero emissions cargo ship will set sail in Norway

If all goes to plan, the ship will make its first journey between two Norwegian towns before the end of the year, with no crew onboard. Instead, its movements will be monitored from three onshore data control centers.It’s not the first autonomous ship — an autonomous ferry launched in Finland in First conceptualized in 2017, the ship was created in partnership with technology firm Kongsberg Maritime and shipbuilder Vard. Capable of carrying 103 containers and with a top speed of “At some point, these ships will have to start interacting with each other so they can exchange information and create paths that are not conflicting,” he says.Negenborn adds that without a crew onboard to carry out maintenance checks, autonomous ships would need built-in self-diagnosing systems with the ability to detect and fix problems, or call for human assistance.Besides technical issues, he says there are also legal implications when looking at traveling between countries.”The Yara Birkeland operates along the Norwegian coast, but if it went further, then it might encounter other territorial regions with perhaps different rules and regulations that need to be met,” says Negenborn. “Who is liable if something goes wrong?” Although Yara International has no plans to add more autonomous ships to its operations, Sletten says we may see more elements of AI technology used on commercial ships in the future.”On overseas vessels is perhaps a step too far, but I think elements are already being used in shipping today when it comes to mooring and to the voyage,” he says. “I think we’ll see more partly autonomous elements added.”