German shipping major Oldendorff Carriers has invested and become a minor shareholder of Groke Technologies, a Finnish start-up creating navigation solutions and developing new navigation technologies.
Oldendorff Carriers has a close relationship with the Japanese trading and investing firm, Mitsubishi Corporation, who is the leading investor of Groke Technologies and introduced the company to Oldendorff.
“Owning and operating 750 chartered and owned ships on average, Oldendorff empathized with Groke’s vision to not jump into autonomy but rather focusing on the support of crews and safety of the navigation, and came to a decision to invest in Groke,” Groke stated in a release.
Whilst fully autonomous ships is probably the future it is a long way off. After all we have been experimenting with it since the 70s, led by Japan, and are still a long way from achieving the goal.