Rolls Royce Developing Drone Cargo Ships

kc123 writes in with news that Rolls Royce is designing unmanned cargo ships."Rolls-Royce's Blue Ocean development team has set up a virtual-reality prototype at its office in Alesund, Norway, that simulates 360-degree views from a vessel's bridge. Eventually, the London-based manufacturer of engines and turbines says, captains on dry land will use similar control centers to command hundreds of crewless ships. Drone ships would be safer, cheaper and less polluting for the $375 billion shipping industry that carries 90 percent of world trade, Rolls-Royce says."

Re:What do the humans actually do on a ship?

[Firethorn]

very few airplanes need in-air service.

I remember reading about a plane where there was a crawspace so you could do maintenance on engines while in flight. But I'll point out that cargo ships are often out of dock for 30+ days at a time, while planes are hardly ever up for more than half a day, after which they go through large amounts of maintenance.

Re:What do the humans actually do on a ship?

[floobedy]

But other than piloting, what else do humans do, and how automatable is it?

Generally the employees on a ship are divided into officers and crew. The officers include the captain, first mate, and second mate. Also the officers include the engineering department, with a chief engineer, second engineer, and third engineer. Among the crew, there are a bunch of seamen (perhaps 5 or more of them). There is also a steward and a cook.

All of these people are divided into shifts. At any given time, there are 5 or so people working: one deck officer (such as the captain), one engineer (who is maintaining the large engine), and a couple of able seaman, one of whom is on lookout at the front of the ship.

I doubt they could do away with the engineering positions. These ships have large engines which require continuous maintenance. It won't be done by robots any time soon.

Perhaps they could automate the captain/lookout positions. Doing so would reduce the people on a shift from 5 or so, to 3. Perhaps there could be one captain for a convoy of ships, and a single lookout for the forward-most ship in the convoy. Also they could reduce the steward/cook to one person (instead of two) per ship in that case.