MacGregor, part of Cargotec, has signed up to Rolls-Royce’s autonomous ship project. The Finnish equipment manufacturer has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on research and development to explore the impact of developments in autonomy for cargo ship navigation and cargo systems onboard container hips.
Asbjørn Skaro, Rolls-Royce, director of digital and systems, said: “Rolls-Royce is pioneering remotely controlled and autonomous ships and believes such a remote controlled ship will be in commercial use by the end of the decade and a common sight on the high seas by 2030. For the full benefits of such a change to be realised many activities currently done today manually will need to be done autonomously. This research will help us explore how that might be achieved.”
For his part, Pasi Lehtonen, an SVP at MacGregor, commented: “MacGregor wants to reshape and transform the industry to make it much more efficient, safer and more sustainable. In the segments where we operate, we see a lot of unnecessary waste in the forms of inefficiency, damage to cargo, and continuously dangerous working conditions. Our aim is to minimise this waste from the value network and this collaboration on autonomy for container ships is a good example of where industry leaders work together to transform the industry.”
