Technical Research Center Of Finland News

VTT Technical Research Center of Finland said it is developing steering for the remote-monitored and controlled autonomous ships of the future. The new technology has been developed for navigation systems and ship autopilots, which steer ships automatically. “VTT has deep knowledge of autonomous ship research concerning especially reliability and safety topics. Such special expertise has now led to the development of navigation systems for autonomous ships,” says Jussi Martio, a Senior Scientist at VTT.

Rolls-Royce and VTT Technical Research Center of Finland Ltd have announced a strategic partnership to design, test and validate the first generation of remote and autonomous ships. The new partnership will combine and integrate the two company’s unique expertise to make such vessels a commercial reality. Rolls-Royce is pioneering the development of remote controlled and autonomous ships and believes a remote controlled ship will be in commercial use by the end of the decade. The company is applying technology, skills and experience from across its businesses to this development.

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.

Cargotec's Kalmar,  as part of a consortium, received a commendation award of $100,000 (USD)  in the Next Generation Container Port (NGCP) Challenge at the Singapore International Maritime Awards on April 11. The NGCP Challenge sought to identify innovative ideas on how to plan, design and operate the next generation of container ports that exemplify performance, productivity and sustainability. Kalmar's proposal was prepared in close cooperation with Singapore Nanyang Technological University, APL Co Ltd, Fraunhofer IDM@NTU and VTT Technical Research Center of Finland.

Napa Ltd is continuing its research into the physics of a flooding vessel; this effort is part of Ship Flooding, a national research project on progressive flooding and damage stability of ships being conducted in Finland. The other partners are the Finnish Naval Research Institute, Technical Research Center of Finland (VTT), Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) and STX Finland Cruise Ltd. The project is funded in part by Tekes (the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation).