Page 46: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2021)

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Autonomy is a Journey

Photo: Wärtsilä Voyage

Wärtsilä Voyage Helps to De? ne and Drive Maritime’s Automated Future

As the maritime industry faces numerous environmental and ef? ciency chal- lenges, the future is ship automation and Wärtsilä Voyage is a driver. Sean

Fernback, President, and Thomas Pedersen, Director, Automation & Dynamic

Positioning, Wärtsilä Voyage discuss the path and the pace

By Greg Trauthwein it for, and some of those operational pro? les will lend them-

Sean, it seems many de? ne “autonomy” differently. How do selves much better to be automated.

you de? ne Wärtsilä’s smart-autonomy approach?

Sean Fernback, President, Wärtsilä Voyage: Autonomy

Obviously there are a wide range of vessels and operating is a journey and there is no question that, at some point, vari- pro? les. Which ones lend themselves best to automation ous vessels in different classes will be fully autonomous. The and autonomy?

question is; which vessels will be ? rst? Will they be coastal?

Will they be tugs? We don’t know. What is required to deliver Pedersen: The most obvious example is a ship going be- a fully autonomous vessel is hugely complex. When you look tween two ports, very short transit time in an area where at the existing ? eet in maritime, you’re looking in technology there’s no risk of collision with anything else. That would be in an order of magnitude that is almost incomprehensible to the simplest operational pro? le to automate and it would make the technology we have on vessels today. So today most ves- sense to automate more of the task being done on such a ship sels will have navigation, sensors, sonar, weather and comms, than ships operating in more complicated environments. Ev- that sort of thing. Autonomy is about delivering a set of solu- erything we do, everything we develop, we develop together tions where ultimately the sum total of those solutions will with customers. We strive to ? nd customers that have chal- deliver a fully autonomous vessel. lenges in the current operations, (and we) can help by offer- ing some level of automation or advanced decision support systems.

A common theme we hear is that ship owners are not driv- ing it (autonomy), the technology companies are driving it.

What’s your perspective? Wärtsilä made the news recently with the American

Steamship Company, the ? rst to install the Wärtsilä smart

Thomas Pedersen, Director, Automation & Dynamic move solutions for hands-off transit along the Cuyahoga

Positioning, Wärtsilä Voyage: I hope not! We try to look a

River in Ohio. Can you tell us a bit more about the con- little bit less at ‘autonomous ships,’ and more at automating tract and its signi? cance to Wärtsilä Voyage?

the operations of a ship. That same ship can have different operational pro? les depending on what the ship owner is using Pedersen: It’s the ? rst company to install this that we can talk about. It’s an interesting case in many different ways. It 46 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • April 2021

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