Several leading companies have teamed up for the co-creation ecosystem, One Sea. Now MacGregor, part of Cargotec, has joined the 2016-founded project that aims to jointly develop the world‘s first system of autonomous ships.
The partner‘s shared vision is to enable fully remote-c[ds_preview]ontrolled vessels in the Baltic Sea in three years and to achieve autonomous commercial maritime traffic by 2025.
Leading the One Sea ecosystem is DIMECC (Digital, Internet, Materials & Engineering Co-Creation). The association of Finnish Marine Industries also supports its work and the Finnish funding agency TEKES has invested in the project.
»The benefits of co-creation are obvious, software experts, together with systems and equipment experts, can improve efficiency and safety throughout the whole value chain,« says Alexander Nürnberg, Senior Vice President, R&D and Technology, MacGregor.
»We in MacGregor started the transformation journey several years ago and are proceeding step-by-step towards autonomous equipment operations and eventually autonomous vessels,« continues Mr Nürnberg.
»Productivity will be driven by advances in connectivity and digitalisation«
The steps that the company has already taken include the ability to have greater connectivity to equipment. »This means that we can undertake performance monitoring and further enable condition-based monitoring and predictive maintenance,« Nürnberg explains. About ten years ago, MacGregor introduced its OnWatch service for offshore crane customers, which included round-the-clock remote access and trouble-shooting. This service is now being further enhanced by a »Scout« function that performs predictive maintenance and condition-monitoring.
»We understand that transformation and shaping the industry are best done in close cooperation with customers and other stakeholders,« notes Pasi Lehtonen, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Business Development and Strategy, MacGregor. »Productivity developments will be driven by advances in connectivity and digitalisation, along with new business models and capabilities. Autonomous maritime transportation is a perfect example of such a new capability.«
»MacGregor‘s vast experience in understanding container ship efficiency throughout its lifecycle enables us to widen developments for ultimately enabling the autonomous operation of cargo systems on board container vessels,« adds Mr Lehtonen.
The One Sea ecosystem is the latest in a series of collaborative initiatives by MacGregor and is one of many projects designed to create products and develop software and solutions to enable autonomous vessel traffic. MacGregor is collaborating with Rolls-Royce on research and development in autonomy for cargo ship navigation and cargo systems on board container ships.
