Page 32: of Marine News Magazine (April 2020)

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AUTONOMOUS WORKBOATS “If you can take some of the human risk elements out of the boat, it doesn’t mean you’re taking the humans out of it too.” – Don Black,

Vice President of

Sea Machines

In a similar exercise one year earlier,

Sea Machines demonstrated its SM300 in Denmark, on board an autonomous- command, remote-controlled ?reboat owned by Tuco Marine. For both ?re- boats and spill response vessels, autono- mous technology can free up crews to focus primarily on the dif?cult and dan- gerous emergency response task at hand, rather than navigating and performing other basic functions. Or, depending on the situation, humans could potentially be removed from the operation entirely to prevent exposure to hazardous conditions.

Elsewhere, places like Singapore and several areas in Northern Europe are pushing their locations to be autono- mous testbeds, Carluccis says.

In the bustling Port of Singapore, which sees more than 130,000 vessels calling annually, technology company

Wärtsilä is working with towage and pilotage service ?rm PSA Marine to further advance the capabilities of a har- bor tug ?t with dual azimuth thruster controls as well as a sensor suite, in- cluding Wärtsilä’s RS24 near-?eld high

Credit: Sea Machines

April 2020 32 MN