Over the past two years, China has adopted a “Zero-Covid” approach to the coronavirus. Rather than acknowledge that Covid will be with us forever as an “endemic” disease, China believes it can beat and eradicate the virus by shutting down huge swathes of its economy when there is an outbreak. Those shutdowns threaten shipping and commerce especially, with the latest outbreak is no exception.

China has reported an outbreak of Covid in the Chinese city of Ningbo, home to a major strategic port and one major part of the Chinese supply chain.

The outbreak comes as two days ago, China confirmed over 30 Covid cases in Ningbo. The Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan is a major port that handled over 365,000 TEUs of cargo since the New Year less than a week ago. If it shuts down due to the Covid outbreak and cannot be staffed, Chinese exports will be affected again on a large level.

Back in August 2021, the Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan shut down after a case of Covid at the port and fears of a widespread outbreak among port workers. Now, cases have increased in the city, making a shut down more likely. Back in August, the port was closed for over two weeks. As of yesterday, no port workers had tested positive yet, a potentially hopeful sign. However, trucking operations in the city are already known to have been affected, as the city shut down many areas due to the outbreak.

The threat of another port shut down in China comes as the supply chain remains overloaded and under close scrutiny.

China appears to have chosen a Zero-Covid strategy instead of putting its business concerns first. Recently, the Chinese city of Xi’an, with 13 million residents, locked down over a Covid outbreak. Starting on December 22nd, the lockdown remains in effect, pointing to the longest period of lockdown since the original virus outbreak in Wuhan two years ago. With the Chinese government under intense pressure to prevent a wider Covid outbreak in the country, all ports are not out of the crosshairs yet. With this in mind, supply chain issues may be further aggravated by the latest developments.

Source: morethanshipping

The Global Autonomous Ships market research report represents major insights on the current growth dynamics as well as the primary revenue generation elements that are available in the Autonomous Ships industry along with various other factors over the predicted period 2022-2028. The report on the Autonomous Ships market is focusing on a series of parameters including top manufacturing strategies, Autonomous Ships industry share, prime opportunities, industrial channel, and profit margin, etc. The research study on the global Autonomous Ships market is liable to showcase essential development in the distinct regions including the United States, Europe, Asia Pacific, and China.

On the basis of strategic aspects, the report represents the detailed profile of the major vendors and meanwhile, evaluates their discrete business-driven strategies and other development plans. In this study, we have used an extraordinary perspective during the COVID-19 pandemic period to closely inspect the development and growth of the Autonomous Ships industry.

Source: industrialit

Huntington Ingalls Industries’ technical solutions division has announced the successful integration of its advanced autonomy solutions with Sea Machines Robotics’ SM300 autonomy product. The integration of these autonomous capabilities supports complex mission planning and collaboration between unmanned systems.

The demonstration, which took place late last year in the Chesapeake Bay off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va., involved overlaying HII’s collaborative autonomy and mission planning behaviors with the Sea Machines SM300 system on an unmanned surface vessel (USV).

“This represents an important milestone in our continued autonomy development,” Duane Fotheringham, president of Technical Solutions’ Unmanned Systems business group, said in a prepared statement. “The integration was seamless and illustrates the immense potential for our open architecture autonomy to work collaboratively with other autonomous systems.”

Sea Machines’ SM300 system can be outfitted to ocean-capable vessels to enable remotely commanded USV operations or can work alongside an onboard crew to elevate the capability, precision and endurance of a mission-driven vessel. During the demonstration, HII’s autonomy managed mission delegation and enabled collaborative autonomy with other unmanned systems while providing the SM300 system information to manage the USV heading and speed.

“Sea Machines’ products are developed to integrate readily with the wide range of vessel types. Our goal is to fit seamlessly into a vessel’s command and control stack which in some cases will include information and control systems from other autonomy systems either above or below our technology,” said Michael G. Johnson, CEO of Sea Machines. “We are encouraged by the rapid progress demonstrated by the HII team as they integrate their technology with our product to elevate the capability of their customers.”

The open architecture and modularity of HII’s autonomy make it a flexible, scalable option for customers seeking to enhance their current autonomy platform with additional advanced capabilities. HII’s collaborative autonomy enables complex mission delegation to multiple unmanned assets that all share situational awareness. Together, HII and Sea Machines will offer varying levels of autonomy complexity for different operations.

In July 2020, HII announced a minority share investment in Boston-based Sea Machines as part of its expansion into the unmanned systems. This investment complemented other company investments in autonomy, artificial intelligence and machine learning, cyber, C5ISR, and advanced modeling and simulation to support a more integrated, connected force. In May of 2021, the SM300 was integrated on an HII test platform.

Since then, HII has further developed and refined its own autonomy solutions, including collaborative autonomy, advanced health monitoring, and sensor fusion and perception, which have been fielded on 23 vessel types for more than 6,000 hours.

Source: workboat

The “Mayflower 400” — the world’s first intelligent ship — bobs gently in a light swell as it stops its engines in Plymouth Sound, off England’s southwest coast, before self-activating a hydrophone designed to listen to whales.

The 50-foot (15-metre) trimaran, which weighs nine tonnes and navigates with complete autonomy, is preparing for a transatlantic voyage.

On its journey the vessel, covered in solar panels, will study marine pollution and analyse plastic in the water, as well as track aquatic mammals.

Eighty percent of the underwater world remains unexplored.

Brett Phaneuf, co-founder of the charity ProMare and the mastermind behind the Mayflower project, said the ocean exerts “the most powerful force” on the global climate.

Rosie Lickorish, a specialist in emerging technologies at IBM, one of the partners on the project, said the unmanned craft provided an advantage in the “unforgiving environment”.

“Having a ship without people on board allows scientists to expand the area they can observe,” she told AFP.

A variety of technology and service providers have contributed to the project with hundreds of individuals involved from nations including India, Switzerland and the United States, said Phaneuf.

The project would have cost 10 times the roughly $1 million (820,000 euros) invested by ProMare without the “global effort,” he added.

– Smart captain –

The non-profit venture will offer the data gathered by the project free of charge. The information could be of particular use to the future of commercial shipping.

The autonomous ship is scheduled to embark on May 15 if weather is favourable and permission is granted by British authorities.

The journey to Plymouth, Massachusetts — the same voyage made by pilgrims on the original “Mayflower” in 1620 as they sought a new life in America — will take three weeks.

While the Mayflower 400 voyage has been delayed because of the pandemic, Phaneuf said at least no one will fall ill on the trip.

“No one will get bored or tired or sick on this one. So it can take as long as it likes to do science,” he said from the British port.

Sitting alongside him were three computer technicians checking the equipment remotely.

Meirwen Jenking-Rees, a 21-year-old student engineer, checked the ship’s engines before it headed out for a sea trial.

Construction of the trimaran, which is automated from the robotic rudder that steers it to the diesel generator that supplements its solar power, took a year.

Developing its “smart captain”, the onboard artificial intelligence, took even longer as the computer has had to learn how to identify maritime obstacles by analysing thousands of photographs.

– Lack of regulations –

The “Mayflower 400” also had to be taught how to avoid collisions and first went to sea for “supervised learning”.

Robotics and software engineer Ollie Thompson said that by running a “number of scenarios” the ship can learn “what are good actions, bad actions, so safe and unsafe”.

So if it makes a mistake, the boat can correct itself “and then learn itself,” he added.

The automated vessel uses its “eyes” and “ears” — a sophisticated system of six cameras and radar — to continue learning on its own.

Because of a lack of regulations around unmanned sailing, the Mayflower 400 is yet to be tested in rough seas or storms, a situation Jenking-Rees described as a “worst case scenario”.

In simulated settings, however, the robotic craft has faced 50-metre waves.

Lickorish explained that the boat’s artificial intelligence will be pivotal in conducting scientific experiments.

“It was trained with hundreds of hours of audio data,” she said, “to detect the presence of marine mammals, recognise the marine mammals, and actually tell us something about population distributions out in the open ocean”.

Analysing the chemical composition of the water, measuring sea levels and collecting samples of microplastics are the ship’s other missions.

While the ship is totally autonomous, the team will monitor the ship 24 hours a day from England, ready to intervene remotely in case of danger.

Source: france24

The maritime research vessel Mayflower Autonomous Ship is a first-of its-kind autonomous ship — and IBM technology played a central role in bringing it to life. On its inaugural journey, the ship will commemorate the original Mayflower by following its transatlantic route. But this modern Mayflower will gather critical ocean data on the impact of climate change and pollution so that marine researchers can better understand and protect our oceans — now and into the future.

IBM engineered the crewless ship with three layers of technology: sensory inputs, real-time machine learning and analytics, and a decision engine. IBM experts used petabytes of data to train machine learning models and wrote rules-based decisioning for the decision engine, enabling the ship to react to an often-treacherous ocean environment — with zero human intervention. It adheres to maritime law while making crucial split-second decisions. It reroutes itself around harsh weather environments. It collects and analyzes massive amounts of ocean data. And it does it all 24/7.

By extending the ship’s groundbreaking intelligent automation, operational decision-making, edge computing and AI-powered remote monitoring technologies across industries, we can pave the way for the next generation of innovation, efficiency, safety and cost-savings in your business.

Source: ibm

NSSLGlobal will now provide, install and service DDK’s GNSS Precise Point Positioning (PPP) solution which enhances the ability of NSSLGlobal’s customers to precisely locate and track their assets. DDK’s independent GNSS technology is provided exclusively through Iridium’s global satellite constellation, and creates a robust, resilient and completely independent GNSS solution that has an enhanced accuracy of less than 5cm, compared to the standard GPS accuracy of 10m.

Kevin Gaffney, DDK Positioning CEO based in Aberdeen, said: “This partnership is a fantastic fit for DDK Positioning. We are now in a place to provide our clients with our precise positioning solutions globally and we are delighted to formalise our working relationship with NSSLGLobal with the signing of this new strategic alliance. To continue the journey with such a strong and well-respected company such as NSSLGLobal, and with their reach in the market, makes great sense and we are looking forward to the journey that we will have together.”

Paul Rutherford, service director, NSSLGlobal, commented: “DDK Positioning is leading the field in advanced GNSS positioning. We’re pleased to partner with such an innovative company and to be able to add this technology offering on top of the already extensive navigation and communication portfolio we offer our customers. The system will provide greater location accuracy, along with the ability to help detect and mitigate spoofing,”

Source: thedigitalship

Source: thecowboychannel

Source: cyprusshippingnews

Videosoft’s adaptive low bandwidth video streaming technology has been selected and installed on the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) to help relay high-quality footage of the ship’s various missions back to humans on land.

On its maiden voyage this spring, MAS will trace the route of the famous 1620 Mayflower, sailing from Plymouth, UK, to Plymouth, MA, only this time there will be no human captain or crew on board as the 15m, lightweight, hybrid-electric powered trimaran crosses the Atlantic.

Videosoft’s technology will help capture footage from six cameras on board the Mayflower whilst at sea

Using satellite connectivity and compression technologies, footage will be transmitted back to AI developers and research scientists providing real-time feedback and visuals during the mission. It will also be used to provide the media and public with updates about interesting events that occur during the ship’s ocean adventures.

“The ability to receive live video feed from the ship using minimal communication bandwidth is a game changer for us,” said Don Scott, Chief Technology Officer of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship. “Videosoft provides real-time telepresence allowing us to reliably monitor the live situation and give us confidence in the vehicle’s operation at sea. It has already been an invaluable tool during sea trials and we look forward to having the live feed during the voyage itself.”

Source: cyprusshippingnews