Railways outcompeted canals for shipping, and then road trucks outcompeted railways.
Controlling the boat near the dock is probably more difficult than cars or air planes since swells/waves/winds can move the boat relative to the dock. The robot needs to read the water and wind to protect the boat from collisions.
As taxis, docking/taking on passengers is tricky since it needs to handle situations when people cling onto rails and risk getting stuck between the boat and the dock.
All depends on how far you go with your maneuvering capabilities, which is simply related to costs. Dynamic positioning [0] has existed for a long while and has now moved down even to small dual engined boats [1], on the other hand it requires much more tech and sideways and rotational thrust capabilities than what regular cargo vessels have.
A single prop with a bow thruster, or especially without, can't move freely in the 2D space which makes it much more complicated because you have to move towards the dock with the correct angle depending on wind, current and what not. Then time your maneuvers while taking the environment and for example prop walk [2] and other effects into consideration.
But the space is not 2D unless it's a small calm canal. Waves/swells/wakes can make the difference in vertical position of the bow relative to the stern change by meters (or whatever depending on length) but it can be significant relative to human size. In some situations it might be impossible to take on/let off passengers, so the boat would need to plan its motions taking this into account while otherwise not obstructing or causing danger.
The goal then for the robot is not to position itself in 2D space with meter-level precision, the goal is to behave reliably and predictably in the harbour under chaotic circumstances, with sub-meter precision. That requires predicting movements and drift, taking wind into account. Since this is almost impossible, skippers learn to read the water/wind to understand what is appropriate for safety distances, speed, angles, etc.
A road vehicle could just refuse to move if the environment becomes unrecognizable, but a boat keeps on moving, so the robot can not just "give up".
It's true that thrusters increase the manoeuvrability.
In the spaces where waves and wakes make a difference the tolerances are larger. The one exception is for example smaller commuter ferries without a ramp, then you might have to time it as you say.
Wind and current doesn't really matter as long as you have dynamic position which abstracts it away as long as you keep within your power budget. The real hard part here is moving through a shifting environment, for example the current often reverses along banks. Especially in a river based harbor environment where you've created piers and what not disrupting the flow.
In a previous life I worked as a skipper in just those conditions, passenger ferries in the 25-40m sizes with a couple of hundred passengers in river harbour environment. Two props and bowthruster and you have to keep all the considerations you mention in account. Especially since you can't angle the stern without angling the bow (duh) when you're applying reverse thrust to dock. And with some speed forward you move the center of rotation forward making the bow thruster less effective.
It was actually easier with quite a strong wind since then that would overcome the current easily and you would lie on the wind margin side of things. If you come too high just make the docking take a bit longer so you would blow down and land perfectly. In almost calm conditions you would instead have to guess which would win that time, wind or current.
That said, the ones with two pods, one at each end you just balance things out and go straight to the dock.
> Controlling the boat near the dock is probably more difficult than cars or air planes since swells/waves/winds can move the boat relative to the dock.
For a layman, it sounds as the same kind of difficulty as controlling a drone in the air. It's not perception and identification of millions of different objects, neither it is predicting other driver's behaviour on the road — it's a physical process. Computers seem to be quite effective at adapting to that.
There are already gps-based systems that can do this on large ships but they are designed for open-water and can keep the boat surprisingly stable even in high winds as long as the ship has thrusters.
You are right though, being by the dock is harder although at this point, you are likely to have some kind of personnel to help tether the boat to the quay.
For those interested in this sort of stuff have a look at YouTube channel rctestflight - very cool diy projects. Less ML and more solar powered waypoints but still found it insightful on the unique challenge water provides
This is an interesting article but it needs a big disclaimer.
They are designing a self-driving boat without using sonars not radars due to their budget. It's fun but of little relevance to the real world. Most of their problems would be solved or at least heavily alleviated with access to the relevant sensors.
Still, that's quite impressive for a college project built on a shoe string.
If we’re talking practical, you’d always need people on board to deal with mechanical breakdown or emergencies. And you’d need all the support systems and supplies need for them. After factoring that in, how large is the bridge crew on a container ship?
Also, pirates would become a problem because taking over a ship without a crew would easier and way less risk.
The argument for easier piracy assumes that a self-driving ship would have a standard "people accessible" format. There's no reason for packaging of the vessel to remain the same.
Consider patrol drones. They look nothing like something an individual can get into.
This was already addressed. Most of it would still have to be human accessible for maintenance/emergency purposes. If you're going to have to potentially service the thing underway, there is no point redoing the packaging.
Besides which, an automated ship is about a trio of tugs, a computer replacement, and a buncha fuel away from anywhere.
In terms of maintenance you can put the access below the cargo which significantly increases what it takes to hijack a ship. However for hijacking’s the simplest approach is to simply scuttle the ship remotely. If they get nothing then it’s rather hard to get people to hijack the next ship.
You mean deliberately sink a $10 million ship, causing a massive environmental disaster. Not to mention being a hazard to other shipping if the water is shallow enough or the ship breaks apart.
Do you blow up a grocery store because someone attempts to steal a jar of pickles?
You need to improve reliability and have a mobile crew you can dispatch on an emergency. Most mechanical engines do not need a maintenance crew on-site all the time, including the much larger and more complex electricity generators and the disaster-prone airplanes.
About pirates, no, they work will become much harder if you don't have anybody they can point a gun to and tell to stop the ship.
It depends. For last-mile delivery and public transport with small vessels, that may not be the case.
The city of Ghent was eyeing autonomous small crafts as "water taxis", and a big shipping provider wanted to do last-mile(s) delivery for shops, restaurants, and small parcel pickup points along a river. For the latter case, the vessel would still be manned, but instead of having to navigate, that person could sort and prepare parcels for delivery.
I don't think it is the costs necessarily but the availability of people with the right skills. Even with the money, you can't just magic up qualified mariners.
Also, a significant amount of money is spent providing 24 hour cover of navigation in the bridge so I guess you could save something by automating a lot of it.
You are probably right that in the extreme, it would be better to have some humans to make sure your containers make it to their destination!
Economics of scale are the whole point of large vessels so yeah, there's much less money to be saved eliminating crew on ships vs semi truck drivers (or even shipyard equipment operators).
there is a dutch startup called roboat thats working on autonomous boats for transportation of humans. Eventually we will also have autonomous Cargo ships
When I met them (years ago), they seemed to be more focused on open waters. In particular, I believe they were providing monitoring vessels in the Mediterranean during the refugee crisis.
Controlling the boat near the dock is probably more difficult than cars or air planes since swells/waves/winds can move the boat relative to the dock. The robot needs to read the water and wind to protect the boat from collisions.
As taxis, docking/taking on passengers is tricky since it needs to handle situations when people cling onto rails and risk getting stuck between the boat and the dock.