The world's first success to demonstrate unmanned operation by large ferries: The future of the sea with a view of MEGURI2040

Yukitoku Tsuchino (Nippon Com)

The unmanned operation of a large curfele was provided in the sea area of the Iyo Nada from Shinmoji Port, and has moved significantly for practical use.Report on the latest automatic shipment system, the future of shipping and water transportation seen through projects, and the issues.

Before the start of the demonstration experiment that is anchored on the quay.Passenger capacity is 268

The Nippon Foundation and the Mitsubishi Shipbuilding and the New Nippon Sea Ferry were successfully demonstrated on the unmanned operation of a large curfere on January 17, 2022, with a round -trip sea area of 240 km round -trip from the Kitakyushu City to the Iyo Nada.The "Soroiyu" used is 222 in total length.5 meters, 15,515 tons in total tonnes.Automatic operation at high speeds at a high speed of 26 knots (about 48 km / h) on a large ship with a large ship over 200 meters is the world's first attempt.

Eight infrared cameras play the role of the sailor

Meguri2040 members monitoring the automatic shipment system

The New Japan Sea Ferry is a new shipbuilding of a smart ferry that participated in the unmanned operation ship project "MEGURI2040" promoted by the Nippon Foundation from the construction stage.The Mitsubishi Shipbuilding will be able to develop an automatic voyage system, and the New Nippon Sea Ferry is in charge of setting requirements and demonstration experiments necessary for automatic pilot.Since its in service between Yokosuka and Kitakyushu (Shinmoji) in July 2021, data for unmanned operations has been accumulated.The main tests of this time are an automatic maneuver that detects other ships and obstacles and operates while avoiding approaching and collisions, and automatic off -line shores with directions and backwards, which hits the garage of cars.When operating unmanned, the automatic operating system "SUPER BRIDGE-X" moves the ship along the planned route, analyzes the information of the object image analysis system in addition to AIS (automatic ships) and radar.Avoid collisions.The object image analysis system that replaces the sailors visually uses eight infrared cameras.It has high detection capacity even at night.Approximately 240 km, 5 and a half hours of fishing boats and tankers, which usually operated, came and go, but succeeded in operating automatic operations while avoiding more than a dozen ships.Although he switched only once, President Hideo Mori of the Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Technology Department said, "The system was running properly. It showed a route that could give a little anxiety to the other ship.The captain was manually avoided. "These issues are born for the first time after a demonstration experiment, and add, "I want to continue testing and solving issues."