# The Ocean-Going Autonomous Ship--Challenges and Threats
## 1 Introduction  
Autonomous vehicles, such as drones in the air, will be extensively used at sea in the near future. This trend seems to be increasingly accepted by the marine community, primarily for economic reasons. Autonomous ships are considered mainly in the context of cost reduction. Currently, autonomous or remotely controlled platforms are used at sea, primarily as carriers of various measuring devices. This applies particularly to hydrography, oceanography and off-shore technologies. However, these are still operations carried out mostly nearshore, usually in controlled test areas or outside the shipping routes. Many companies, mostly from Scandinavian countries and Japan, are working on full-size autonomous ships with the goal of obtaining cargo vessel or even passenger vessel capabilities. Kongsberg and Rolls-Royce seem to be conducting the most advanced work. They have just received funding from the European Commission (the 'Autoship' project) in the amount of 20 million euro from 27.6 million of the total project costs [1]. In this framework, within two and a half years, two autonomous ships will be built with the option of remote control and all the necessary infrastructure. The tests are to be carried out during the two pilot demonstration campaigns on the sea routes from the Baltic corridor to the largest ports of the European Union. It can be expected that the success of these experiments will also lead to the fact that in the future some existing ships will be reconstructed to such a standard, which may prove to be a cheaper solution. Rolls-Royce together with the Finnish ferry operator Finterries demonstrated the passage of the ferry 'Falco' between Parainen and Nauvo, south of Turku, Finland, in December 2018. The ferry navigated autonomously, including the collision avoidance maneuver. Some part of the passage was done in the remote control mode. Rolls-Royce and Finterries are now engaged in the SVAN research project (Safer Vessel with Autonomous Navigation). It is the continuation of the earlier Advanced Autonomous Waterborne Applications (AAWA) research project, funded by Business Finland [2]. Kongsberg has experience in working on autonomous vessels development after the common project with Yara on world's first autonomous and zero emissions container ship. Norwegian shipbuilder Vard has been selected to build the vessel. It is planned to be ready to operate 'YARA Birkeland' completely autonomously by the year 2022 [3]. It should be noted that in April 2019 Rolls-Royce Commercial Marine was acquired by Kongsberg Maritime, and they are now fully integrated, so the autonomous shipping projects are being conducted under the new organizational frame [4]. MUNIN (Maritime Unmanned Navigation through Intelligence in Networks) is another project in this field. Research undertaken between 2012 and 2015 resulted in the description of the concept of evolution from manned to unmanned vessels, through redesigning of the ships' key tasks [5]. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are often considered also as unmanned objects, requiring a new approach in regulation and legislation. However, from the point of view of ocean-going autonomous ships development this is a slightly different challenge. AUVs are mostly used in the close vicinity of mother vessel, due to the positioning methods used in this kind of operation. But there are systems which utilizes both underwater and surface vehicles with no human presence, becoming the cutting-edge means of marine environment exploration, but also facing challenges related to both types of vehicles. The winning solution of the recently completed global competition called Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE may be an example of the successful cooperation between underwater and surface vessels in order to obtain high-quality data about the seafloor.