Ox News

While there remains much debate as to what an autonomous future looks like in the maritime sector, one company, Sea Machines, is helping to pace the field with product development, partnerships and investment.Sea Machines Robotics announced today that it had closed a $10 million Series A investment led by Accomplice VC, with participation from several corporate titans including Toyota AI Ventures; Brunswick Corp., through investment partner TechNexus Venture Collaborative; Eniac Ventures…

The Rolls-Royce portfolio of equipment and services extends well beyond the engine room, leveraging decades of experience in myriad business sectors. The words ‘Rolls-Royce’ can roll right off your tongue, and when they do, the average person in the maritime space probably thinks first of big, powerful, and environmentally-correct marine engines. That might have rung true just two decades ago, but today, that visual doesn’t give justice to what the firm has evolved to become. That’s also where Jay McFadyen, Rolls-Royce Senior Vice President for Ship Intelligence, comes in. In a candid interview given at this year’s SMM Exposition in Hamburg, Germany, McFadyen laid out for Marine News not only what Rolls-Royce is up to today, but also where it is headed tomorrow.

Rolls-Royce unveiled its vision of the land-based control centers that we believe will remotely monitor and control the unmanned ships of the future. In a six minute film, Rolls-Royce presents a vision of the future in which a small crew of 7 to 14 people monitor and control the operation of a fleet of vessels across the world. The crew uses interactive smart screens, voice recognition systems, holograms and surveillance drones to monitor what is happening both on board and around the ship.

In 2013 alone, Rolls-Royce invested £1.1 billion on research and development while at the same time supporting a global network of 31 University Technology Centers, which position Rolls-Royce engineers at the forefront of scientific research. Today, Rolls-Royce predicts that Ship Intelligence will be the next major transition for the shipping industry as ships become ever more complex. As that happens, managing high levels of data in order to operate on-board systems will be a big part of that reality. At first, says Roll-Royce, this will better manage propulsion and navigation systems. Later, it could potentially lead to autonomous vessels.

For decades the maritime industry has long-theorized of emulating the “airline model” in uniformity and technical capability of its own ship and boat integrated bridge platform. Enter Rolls-Royce and the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland which together have launched a ship intelligence system that it believes could be the next major transition for the shipping, able to gather, process and reasonably present increasing amounts of complex and high-level data from onboard systems to manage propulsion, navigation and potentially lead .to autonomous vessels.

Rolls-Royce, together with VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, unveiled its latest vision of Ship Intelligence, a bridge concept which it said could become reality by 2025. Rolls-Royce has worked together with VTT’s researchers and Aalto University to develop the new bridge, known as the Future Operator Experience Concept or ‘oX’. It offers the crew smart workstations, which automatically recognize individuals when they walk into the bridge and adjust to their own preferences.

The 32-ft. tow boat Iron Ox sank April 4 during a storm in the Matagorda Ship Channel. The storm's winds averaged 40 to 50 knots with gusts up to 60. No one was hurt and pollution is minimal, but the wreckage is blocking the ship channel. The Matagorda Ship Channel is the only access for large ships to the port of Point Comfort, Texas. Presently there are four ships awaiting transit. Investigators from U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Satellite Office Port Lavaca, Texas, are overseeing salvage operations and investigating the cause of the sinking. The Iron Ox sank while still attached by cable to the dredge it was tending, between channel markers 43 and 44, near Magnolia, Texas. The tow cable and heavy seas from the storm are slowing salvage operations.

It's been a rough year for tugmeets. Charleston, Boston, and Portland, whose Musters we've covered in the past, were respectively, skipped, canceled, and postponed. The World Ship Society tells us they'll be back next year with the Boston event, and the Portland muster, pre-empted by Hurricane Charlie, is taking place as this is written. We wish we could have gone north. While there are all sorts of good reasons to attend a tugmatch, we, being media people, think mostly about the good press they bring the business. The way things are shaping-up in such realms as national security, the price of fuel, environmental cleanliness and such, waterborne transport displays more and more advantage for the good of all.

A portable non-pressurized, non-explosive and non-flammable emergency oxygen generator — particularly suitable for marine use, will go into production this spring, OX-GEN Flexible Life Systems, Inc., has announced. The OX-GEN generator, which recently received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, produces life-saving 99.97 percent pure oxygen in just seconds. “These units can be used onboard ships and in firefighting, military operations, mines and others places where pressurized oxygen is unsafe because of the potential fire danger,” said Frank Fosella, chairman and president of OX-GEN. “They also will provide a significant extra margin of safety in aircraft and hospitals. When our units are exposed to an open flame, they melt rather than explode.