Re-defining »high performance«

The recent expert conference HIPER 2020 redefined high performance, beyond propellers and hulls, to »everything«. With hypes fading and the Digital Twin paradigm maturing, many pseudo-Industry 4.0 »solutions« are being sniffed out thanks to the now broader horizon. A personal review by Nick Danese

Despite social distancing in times of the Covid-19 pandemic, the conference organized by Volker Bertram and with HANSA as[ds_preview] media partner saw rich discussion and great daily panels. HIPER 2020 was a truly rewarding experience and a light at the end of a tunnel: it showed that people are getting off bandwagons and pursuing pragmatic goals while maintaining a vision and that a number of our industry players have embraced or are moving towards Industry 4.0: HIghPERformance. Broadly speaking, a few major themes stood out.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Volker Bertram’s (HIPER organizer) realistic yet forward thinking »AI is a set of tools that may do jobs better or handle tasks we could not handle at all in the past . . . in its broadest sense, AI is concerned with the investigation and simulation of human intelligence with the ambition to replicate the processes in machines« set the pace. Powerful computers and smart programming by humans sort through Big Data in otherwise impossible ways. Machine Learning and Knowledge-Based Systems lead to the more advanced Natural Language and Gesture Processing. But despite its computational power, AI cannot predict the unpredictable, create, have ethics, develop desire. As Rodrigo Perez-Fernandez deftly puts it: »This is simply because AI cannot be a solution in itself«. His work concludes pragmatically that while AI will be required for success in the future its application in the marine industry is slow – possibly a blessing in disguise given the complexity of the task at hand.

Future technology

Confinement highlighted how far off the pace tools, methods and perception are in today’s digitally oriented world. Answers to on-line teaching challenges are only partial and Tracy Plowman discussed how gaming, virtual reality and social media concepts now apply to human interaction, not just technology. Refreshingly, Kohei

Matsuo: »… strive to pursue a prospective maritime industry in the future … Rather than developing a deductive vision of the future as an extension of current social and technological trends, we focused on fundamental problems and ideal images … formulated a strategic hypothesis based on the attitude of the future image we wanted to create … implemented the strategic hypothesis and organized the technology to achieve it«. IMO tries to keep up, too, by establishing four degrees of ship autonomy in its strategic planning, an effort concurrently supported and hampered by industry progressing faster than regulatory bodies and insurers, thanks to technology being ever cheaper, available and powerful (Giampiero Soncini). Stephan Procee’s Platform Mounted Display aimed at identifying potential collision and evaluating evasive action is an example of what the future might hold.

Alexander Vannas:

Alexander Vannas: As is the case in many areas of the marine industry, there are a number of large companies which continue to pursue a monopolistic business model. Despite being anachronistic in every respect, what they provide continues to being seen as adequate, not to mention that their sheer size is interpreted as a guarantee of performance. This will take time to change. On the other hand, the true Industry 4.0 open architecture, end-to-end system integration paradigm is taking foot. This is recognised by world majors like HP, Bosch, Dell, Advantech, Cisco, etc. who equip their gateways with the Alleantia solution, but also by ship owners who are able to equip their fleets using their own resources at a fraction of the legacy cost. Such open architecture, end-to-end system integration being offered as a plug & play solution also provides unlimited freedom in replacing and adding equipment.

Giampiero Soncini:

Giampiero Soncini: Unmanned or reduced crew shipping is barging to the forefront. Technology allowing unmanned ships has been around at least 30 years. Unmanned trains have been operating now for over 20 years. Cars are being tested for 4-5 years now. It is normal that ships will also be affected by this »movement«. The difference is that technology is much cheaper, much easier, much more powerful today. This leaves social trends, economic models, Class and Regulations desperate to catch up.

Antifouling, friction and hull resistance

Antifouling DTs are not common, forcing empirical testing of new ideas and a relatively short cycle to success or failure. On the technology side, UV emitting LEDs embedded in a transparent layer might soon coat many hulls. UV sanitation is a proven means to an end. Given that wireless energy transmission, neural meshing and 3D printing nanotechnology are just about at the lower-cost industrial level, one might expect that this solution will be made available in the form of sprayable paint and powered, why not, by wind, sun and ship motions. Nanoceramics and 3D printed shark skin patterns may also show promise. Friction peels off long-chain polymers with fouling but Johannes Oeffner’s »Aircoat« has a velcro-like surface finish that traps air, reducing friction and inhibiting fouling simultaneously.

Pandemic-proof ships and numerical models

Massimo Musios work addresses contagious disease outbreaks while cruising with reinvented confinement zones and expandable sick bays. Adding another variable to ship design calls for more numerical models: multi-hulls were dusted off to find that they offer significant advantages especially in specialized applications and it was rediscovered that 20% of ship maintenance cost is unplanned, a striking thought given that maintenance represents 40% of ship operation costs. Forward thinking, Z.R. Yang considers a Virtual-Real Interaction Testing for Functions of Intelligent Ships and how to break the »dependence on human intrinsic knowledge«, use Big-Data to design tests and give ships »cognitive capabilities derived from perception, decision-making capabilities derived from cognition, optimization capabilities derived from decision-making, control capabilities derived from optimization, execution capabilities derived from control, and repair capabilities derived from fault« – perhaps wary of Bertram’s note this might be another way of saying that humans are too subjective to design tests for AI-type machines (should we ask HAL 9000 ?). Modular Conceptual Synthesis (effectively a Lego-type collection of »building block« DigitalTwins), Selection of Environmental Impact Abatement Equipment, Knowledge Base Engineering Based Parametric Modelling and Prediction of Energy Demand on Fuel Cells for Cruise Ships applied in early design stages were also discussed, leading to the sobering consideration that with the exception of wind and solar all power sources seem to generate some undesirable byproduct.

Rodrigo Perez:

Rodrigo Perez: Smart shipyards and ships, intended in the broad sense will up the game. At Compit I discussed what a ship will need to be in order to be smart, starting from its open-architecture design using multi-CAD environments and all the way to a fresh attitude by shipowners. HIPER provides an even higher-tech forum that allowed to review Artificial Intelligence, its application across the industry’s panorama and, most importantly, to picture a realistic roadmap dependent on the necessity for people to have a correct knowledge about what actually is A.I., the capabilities it offers to business, processes and normal life.

Why do you go to HIPER?

Perez: Attending the HIPER this year has been a very fruitful decision, a good choice in this horrible 2020. It was an appropriate and heavily-packed educational and networking opportunity offered to naval architects and marine engineers, everything surrounded by the beautiful Toscana. HIPER differs significantly from other events, and this year even more, with an in-person conference where many researchers presented the latest views and developments in our industry. So the main reason to attend HIPER, apart from meeting new and old friends, is to share and learn about the big world of new technologies applied to the marine industry, because there is a clear potential, and obviously a way to remain competitive, cooperating between the different partners.

What does HIPER represent for you and the industry?

Perez: Due to the pandemic many companies have reduced or even eliminated technical conferences and seminars, and the maritime industry has not been an exception. HIPER has been one of the few who has resisted. Many marine professionals, from students to company owners, professors and CAD developers, have met during the three days, interacting with each other in order to improve our knowledge. This year, two forum panels have been organized, both related to the future: Innovation in the maritime industry & Zero emission shipping by 2050. It is important to attend HIPER, because innovation implicates a huge collection of interrelated and joined technologies, which can be seen in this conference. So at the end, HIPER means state of the art of the marine industry.

ASVs and oil spills

Angelo Odetti and Claneros applied innovative concepts in a very creative fashion: a portable Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) loaded with interchangeable sensors within a micro-LAN and propelled by a very imaginative radio-axial pump, deployed in very shallow waters and the combined use of a highly oleophilic yet hydrophobic sponge material capable of absorbing 30 times its mass flanked by oil-degrading, smell removing allogenic bacteria. As a nice touch both sponges and bacteria are reusable.

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the conjunctive tissue

The topic of IIoT encompasses and wraps everything up elegantly as it connects everything: position predicting, machine learning, testing of intelligent ships, etc. – all depend on both instant data and Big Data at once. Without IIoT that cannot be. Edge computing is not yet implemented as widely as it could be, mostly due to a lack of vision or purpose on the side of the eventual beneficiaries. Closed IoT systems suffocate Industry 4.0, a topic addressed by Alexander Vannas and me, who pitched the Library of Things paradigm as a remedy: communications are established with the drivers and controllers of devices, not with devices themselves, rendering the solution ubiquitous and unlimitedly extensible. This allows multi-directional channels, supports hack-stopping segregated networks and provides a remarkably low cost connectivity in a multi-player system architecture thanks to a novel business model based on the supply of free »drivers« and communication channels through a network of gateways, rendering customers autonomous and not dependent on the IIoT supplier.

Digital Twins: True or false

As there are all sorts of Digital Twins (DT), from synthesized to operational and predictive, there should be a bespoke Digital Twin for each person, process, machine, etc., active within a given process. With ships, that is everything from the first design thought to when the last piece is scrapped. Applying Industry 4.0 principles to ship design and production, I argued that the data and information sharing required to compose the bespoke DTs necessary to support a truly collaborative, distributed process remains a wish when working with Big Industry – a thought that received consensus during a discussion. On the bright side, though, parallel to monolithic / paralytic pseudo-solutions there are many common tools and processes already in place or available out-of-the-box to generate and maintain bespoke DTs , directly supporting the PLM paradigm.

Propulsion

Beautiful Riva motorboats sporting electric engines, a comparative assessment of fuel cell types and several wind propulsion reviews – two lessons learnt being how important routing and assessment of the propulsive forces generated on a particular ship are. In other words, wind propulsion works but it is still being shoehorned into the current economic model.
Author: Nick Danese – Nick Danese Applied Research (NDAR) & SYRRKLE