Driverless cargo ships coming?

An autonomous electric ship called the Yara Birkeland is in production.

The first few trips will have a crew in late 2018, and one container will act as a bridge for the vessel. Eventually, that “bridge” will be moved to shore and the ship controlled like a drone, reports The Drive. By 2020, the ship will operate autonomously with monitoring from shore.

It can carry up to 100 shipping containers and will take fertiliser from a production facility to the Port of Larvik in Norway. The short journey will avoid international waters as the International Maritime Organisation doesn’t aim to have regulations on autonomous international shipping travel until 2020.

Yara International ASA and Kongsberg Gruppen ASA, an agency that builds autonomous guidance systems for civilian and military applications, are building the vessel.

The ship is expected to eliminate 40,000 truck drives annually and the zero fuel/crew cost will result in a 90% lower operating cost. Initial production will cost three times more than the normal cost of a ship that size.

Rolls-Royce is working on a similar concept, aiming for a 2020 release.

Its innovation vice president Oskar Levander says tugboats and ferries will be worked on before bringing the tech to internationally-traveling cargo ships, reports Sky News. “The development will start in a few countries, and these flag states will give the vessel permission to operate before we have international regulations in place.”