Writing in black-marker is scrawled over the glass walls of the office of Captain AI. “Close your eyes, that’s intellectual property,” says Gerard Kruisheer, a co-founder of the Dutch startup. The company’s office is tucked away inside RDM, a sprawling, high-ceilinged hall with steel beams cutting across the former shipyard at what was once the world's busiest port. Now, it’s a hub for innovation in Rotterdam – the port that wants to be the world’s “smartest”.
Those scribbles are strings of the code Captain AI wants to use to create autonomous ships. Captain AI is training a self-sailing software with navigation data and testing various scenarios in a sea simulator. “It’s the extreme cases you want to test with this software,” says company CEO Vincent Wegener. “You want your ship to be able to sail autonomously in all conditions. Rather than waiting for a storm to happen, we create conditions like snow and rain within our simulator and use it to train the algorithm.”
Wegener runs through a list of pros of self-driving ships. He says autonomous ships will be much safer than their human-captained counterparts, citing an Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty report which found that 75 per cent of maritime accidents are currently due to human error. And they would reduce port congestion by eliminating lengthy processes that require humans, such as local pilots who guide container ships into busy harbours. “That’s the official version. The unofficial reason we started doing this is because we thought it would be cool, of course,” he adds.
Automated sailing is among the new technologies Rotterdam is experimenting with. The 42-kilometre stretch running from the city to the North Sea is Europe’s biggest port. It handles about 470 million tonnes of freight each year, contributing €45.6 billion (£40.9bn) or 6.2 per cent of GDP to the Dutch economy directly and indirectly, according to a recent study by Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Maintaining that edge requires foresight. Container terminal operator ECT opened the world’s first automated container terminal in Rotterdam as early as 1993. Today, the terminals run by operators APM Terminals and RWG are among the world’s most advanced. Here, gigantic, unmanned cranes lift containers off vessels. Most of their movements are automated, the remaining manoeuvres remote-controlled. Electrical Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), resembling lorries with no cabin, transport the containers to storage facilities. From there, containers are lifted automatically onto trucks. RWG claims its terminal is run by no more than ten to 15 people every day.
The Port of Rotterdam Authority is implementing a flurry of innovations to ready itself for automation beyond the terminals. “Information which is now transmitted between humans by phone or email should, from 2025, be increasingly communicated directly by smart objects,” says Erwin Rademaker, a programme manager at the port. “In the future, we’ll see cranes talking directly to ships or containers.”
In early 2019, the Authority kicked off the first stage of an internet of things platform. It’s a building block in the creation of what the port calls its “digital twin”, a virtual replica of the port in which all its operations and resources are tracked. Forty-four sensors installed on mooring posts, quay walls, roads, and traffic signs provide data about tides, salinity, wind and more. The port hopes that, one day, these sensors will be able to communicate directly with other autonomous systems, including self-driving ships.
In May, a “smart container” made its first short journey to Germany and back. Kitted out with sensors that measure conditions including vibration, slope and temperature, it will spend two years travelling the world to collect data that should give insight into what containers encounter during their journey.
“Eighty-five percent of the consumer goods you see around you were once transported by container,” says Rademaker. But today’s containers are nothing more than six sheets of metal welded together. “Containers are still left behind on docks, or unloaded in the wrong port, and nobody notices until [they] fail to arrive at their destination. It’s like your suitcase getting lost at an airport, except it will be gone for two months at a seaport. We want to make containers smart, so they can talk to the cranes and prevent things like this from happening.”
The port of Rotterdam wants to be able to host autonomous ships by 2030. The snag? Self-steering container ships do not exist yet. The first of its kind, the Norwegian ship Yara Birkeland, will not launch until 2020, and is expected to operate fully autonomously only in 2022. That is why, to get a handle on autonomous sailing’s practicalities, the port of Rotterdam has created a “floating lab”: former patrol vessel RPA3 has been decked out with cameras and sensors and made available to startups and students for autonomous shipping experiments.
“By making the floating lab available for testing, we can validate the existing technology but also discover what technology is still lacking,” says programme manager Harmen van Dorsser. “Every day I’m learning about what’s not possible yet.”
Captain AI was the first startup to test its software on RPA3. “This year we want to give a demo where the vessel identifies an object and sails around it. We’re almost there,” says Wegener. Ultimately, he envisions a port where the patrol ships that inspect the port’s waters will be unmanned and automated.
Exciting? Yes – unless you happen to be a stevedore. In January 2016, the port of Rotterdam saw its first strike in 13 years. The cause: disagreements between workers and terminals over the expected loss of hundreds of jobs to automation. “You see traditional harbour work disappearing. People used to work in big teams. Canteens were full during mealtimes. Now, small crews remain and machine operation has become a one-man job,” says Niek Stam, the national secretary of dockworkers’ union FNV Havens. Stam believes that Rotterdam’s terminals are harbingers of a global upset. “In other ports, the battle over automation has yet to come,” he says.
In Rotterdam, Rademaker expects jobs to disappear beyond the terminals as well. “Autonomous isn’t the same as unmanned. But if objects are talking with each other and taking autonomous decisions, certain jobs will disappear,” he says.
Still, he sees the port’s drive for automation not as a luxury, but as key for the port’s survival: “Right now, we’re world champions at selling black-and-white TVs. Today’s reality is that we have to start selling colour TVs.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
