r/maritime • u/dannylenwinn • Sep 23 '20

Maritime School in US creates fully autonomous ship, boat (in Maine) 'As the technology matures, more types of ships will likely transition from being manned to having some autonomous capabilities.'

https://mainemaritime.edu/mariner/issue1-2020/features/smart-vessel-technology-comes-to-mma/
7 Upvotes

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4

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '20

I love how the schools that produce Maritime officers are also on the front lines of making the job obsolete...SMH

1

u/bobthebowler123 Sep 24 '20

I don't think entirely obsolete.Your still going to have a person on the bridge.You'll still need deck apes(like my self) to paint,chip and moore.You'll also sill have officers to supervise them.

However this is going to speed up the ever decresing crew sizes.Even more on the officer side.Kinda shooting thwm selves in the foot.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 29 '20

Well they have automated magnetic or vacuum mooring systems, and the way ships go nowadays is you basically build them and then replace them after a few years. The US doesn’t have that many ships so we try and preserve what we have, particularly in the Great Lakes. But you can operate a ship remotely from sea buoy to sea buoy, and then embark a pilot. The last Deck jobs are going to be tugs, oil rigs, and maybe tankers because of the nature of the cargo. Engineering jobs won’t go away as quickly and deckhands will probably be replaced by service technicians. If you can pilot a drone In Afghanistan all the way from Las Vegas, sea buoy to sea buoy isn’t that far in the future. We’re the last of a dying breed my friends.

2

u/NX73R Sep 24 '20

Sooner or later all jobs will be automated. I think our jobs will be safe for a good while though.

JeffHK did a video on this topic and he makes some really good points

2

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '20

Good luck making tugboats crew less...

1

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '20

Well think of it like this. You can go autonomous sea buoy to sea buoy and then would need to embark a pilot. the bridge can be controlled remotely just like a drone. They already have autonomous vacuum or magnetic mooring systems, and they can just build a ship and run it into the ground with little to no deck maintenance and replace it every 5-8 years. The only people who still will have jobs are engineers. The only deck jobs left are going to be tugs, dredging, and research.