As the flow of new shipping hires has dried up, a German company is exploring a potentially revolutionary measure — sending ships without a captain on board.
HGK Shipping, based in the German port of Duisburg, is testing remote navigation from an onshore control center.
Driverless ships are “the only solution to survive as an industry,” HGK chief Steffen Bauer told AFP.
The average age of a captain on HGK’s 350 ships is about 55, said Bauer, whose company claims to be Europe’s leading river cargo operator.
“If we do nothing, we will lose 30% of our seafarers by 2030,” he said.
In search of a solution, HGK signed a cooperation agreement with Belgian start-up Seafar, a leader in the emerging field of autonomous navigation.
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Founded in 2019, Seafar already has four pilotless ships in Belgium and has just opened an office in Germany, which accounts for 30 percent of Europe’s inland shipping.
Unmanned ships are guided by a control center, turning navigation from a chore into a potentially more attractive office job.
Cameras and sensors
“There is a market for remotely piloted ships,” said Janis Bargsten, Seafar’s commercial director, adding that creating a regulatory framework will take less time than perfecting the technology.
In Duisburg, Seafar and HGK have already set up an autonomous navigation center and are awaiting approval from the German authorities to launch their first vessels.
In the initial phase of the test, two captains will remain on board the remote-controlled ships.
The long-term goal is to eliminate the captain’s role entirely while keeping some crew on board, Bauer said.
The technology is similar to that used in autonomous cars: the ships are equipped with sensors, cameras, radar and lidar, transmitting real-time data to the command center.
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“Everything is as it would be on a ship,” navigator Patrick Hertotz told AFP in Duisburg next to 10 monitors showing the status of an autonomous barge on its way to Hamburg.
Life on land
After 30 years at the helm of his own barge, 58-year-old Hertoge was hired by Seafar to work on the autonomous shipping project.
The son of two sailors, he sold his boat and found a home on land for the first time in his life, he said.
“On a boat, you’re on hold 24 hours a day. But here, after eight hours, I can go home,” he said.
Seafar wants to launch more pilot programs in Europe and is in “advanced” talks with the French inland navigation authority. It is also planning a pilot project in the Baltic Sea, Bargsten said.
Autonomous shipping could bring “significant relief” to an industry under pressure but would not solve “all problems”, according to a spokesman for the German Inland Shipping Federation (BDB).
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“New liability issues” require legal clarification, he said.
According to Bargsten, in the event of a technical problem, Seafar will be responsible, but a human error will be borne by the shipping company,
And remotely navigating a vessel is still a highly demanding job that couldn’t be left just to “gamers,” he said.
With many years of real captaincy under his belt, Hertoge is confident it can work.
Much of a ship’s captain’s job is the same on land as it is in a control room, he said. The only thing missing is the air.
Source: AFP