Tech firm Kongsberg Maritime has received approval in principle from classification society DNV to enable a key role to be transferred from a ship to a shore-based control centre.
The move will enable the role of chief engineer to be located in a remote operations centre (ROC), where the duties can be carried out from a desk-based workstation, instead of onboard a vessel.
From the workstation, the chief engineer will be able to monitor and control systems including the power management system, ballast water system and deck machinery on three vessels.
They are the world’s first fully electric container vessel Yara Birkeland; and a pair of electric barges operated by Norwegian grocery retailer ASKO, named Marit and Therese.
Full approval for what’s known as ‘Chief-to-Shore’ functionality is expected to be granted later this year, once a period of testing has taken place, overseen by DNV and the Norwegian Maritime Authority.
Remote machinery support is a first natural step on the path to autonomy
Pål André Eriksen, senior vice president at Kongsberg Maritime, said: “The journey towards autonomous, and uncrewed operation of vessels is defined by a set of increments. To get there, we must take each step in-turn and prove the functionality and value before moving to the next. The role of chief engineer is one which already involves a lot of monitoring of automation and control systems on board. For this trial, moving this functionality to the shore-based ROC will see one person now managing a range of systems across three vessels, rather than one.”
DNV’s head of digital ship systems, Jarle Coll Blomhoff, said: “Remote machinery support is a first natural step on the path to autonomy as the engineering functions onboard a vessel are in many ways already automated.”
Testing will be conducted this summer and will involve the shore-based technician managing a number of tasks on three vessels, all managed remotely from shore. From the ROC, an aggregated view of the three vessels will be visible at all times, and if an issue arises or an intervention is required on one of the vessels, the system will manually switch to high attention mode’ focusing operator attention where support is needed.
The ROC in Horten, Norway, is a facility manged by Massterly, a joint venture between Kongsberg Maritime and Wilhelmsen.
