Annotated summary on an article related to SmartNav 1.0

Marr, B. (2019, June 5) The Incredible Autonomous Ships Of The Future: Run By Artificial Intelligence Rather Than A Crew https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/06/05/the-incredible-autonomous-ships-of-the-future-run-by-artificial-intelligence-rather-than-a-crew/#2fa1d9b66fbf

Annotated summary on an article related to SmartNav

The article, “The Incredible Autonomous Ships Of The Future: Run By Artificial Intelligence Rather Than A Crew” (Marr, 2019), introduces the concept of autonomous ships, how they are beneficial, and what difficulties they currently face. The author wrote this article to inform the general public about autonomous ships. Autonomous ships are vessels that “can operate on its own without a crew” (Marr, 2019). The author believes that autonomous ships are not the end of manned ships as their applications are not universal. There have been deployments of autonomous ships in calm waters with simple routes and little traffic. Autonomous ships are not just a concept but a reality. They are being utilized by many companies such as Rolls-Royce, Samsung, and Shone. The benefits of autonomous ships are that they “can improve safety, increase efficiency, and relieve humans from unsafe and repetitive tasks” (Marr, 2019). The difficulties that they face are that “there is a lot more testing to be done and regulations to be sorted out before we will see fully autonomous vessels operating without a crew” (Marr, 2019). The author states that the development of autonomous ships will be dependent on the development of autonomous cars unless there is an increasing interest in the development of autonomous ships.

As our project focuses on utilizing current onboard devices to plan the ship's route and this article focuses on using autonomous ships to optimize cargo operations, this shows that the cargo ships operational efficiency can be improved with autonomous ships. With regard to efficiency, autonomous ships will optimize the route of the ship to use minimal fuel while travelling. This helps reduce their environmental impact. Autonomous ships will also eliminate human error by fulfilling tasks normally done by people. The information provided by this article supports the concept of SmartNav as it will greatly improve a ship’s operational efficiency and safety.