Assessing Business Cases for Autonomous and Unmanned Ships

Public interest in autonomous ships has grown rapidly since 2012, when the MUNIN project started its investigations. In 2017, the first project, Yara Birkeland, was published and other projects are under development. The business case for autonomous ships is not obvious: Benefits are no crew cost and simpler ship structures. However, it needs expensive shore infrastructure, it needs more redundancy and more expensive fuels than heavy fuel oil, and the approval process may be costly. This may be the reason why projects are not initiated by the ship owners, but by other parties in the supply chain, i.e. the fertilizer manufacturer Yara. Thus, an unmanned ship is an integrated part of a transport system and not an ordinary ship as we know them today. This paper will go through the most important benefits and cost factors for autonomous and unmanned ships and assess what business cases may be suitable for this technology: "An unmanned ship is not a ship without crew it is a new factor in waterborne transport."