In just two decades from now, half of all domestic ships plying Japan’s coastal waters might be piloting themselves.
That is the ambitious goal of the Nippon Foundation, a public interest organization backing the nation’s development of ocean-traversing autonomous ships. It aims to see crewless ships make up 50 percent of Japan’s local fleet by 2040.
With the foundation’s backing, a group that includes Japan’s largest shipping company, Nippon Yusen KK, plans to have a container ship pilot itself from Tokyo Bay to Ise, a coastal city in central Mie Prefecture, in February next year.
Photo: Bloomberg
According to Nippon Yusen, the 380km voyage would be the world’s first test of an autonomous ship in an area with heavy marine traffic.
The global market for autonomous shipping could grow to be worth about US$166 billion by 2030.
“When it comes to the automation of ships, our mission is to have Japan lead the rest of the world,” Satoru Kuwahara, a general manager at Nippon Yusen subsidiary Japan Marine Science Inc, said in an interview on Thursday.
Kuwahara, a captain himself, said there is a real need for autonomous ships in Japan as the country’s workforce shrinks and rapidly ages. In the nation’s domestic tanker industry, for example, about 40 percent of crew are 55 years or older, according to a recent survey.
The Nippon Foundation estimates that taking into account factors like artificial intelligence, which should improve efficiencies, the development of unmanned ships would have a positive impact of about ￥1 trillion (US$9.1 billion) for Japan’s economy in 2040.
There are other foreseeable benefits too, such as lower insurance premiums and improved safety, Kuwahara said.
Studies on shipping industry safety show that about 70 percent of maritime accidents are caused by human error.
“With the issue of Japan’s shrinking workforce in mind, there’s growing need for these technologies to uphold safety,” he said.
For the February test run, information on everything from weather to radar data points would be collected and crunched at a support center back on land. Directions would then be fed back to the ship. In the case of an upset, the vessel’s steering can be taken over remotely from the center.
Kuwahara said he is confident such technology would be ready to be put into practical use by 2025.
The “immense challenge” would be developing a regulatory environment and industry standards around autonomous shipping by then, he said.
For now, Kuwahara and others are gearing up for next year’s trial run, running simulations at a technology center east of Tokyo.
“We need this technology to be recognized, otherwise actual implementation in society won’t move forward,” Kuwahara said. “As a first demonstration, we can’t fail.”
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