Abstract
This chapter attempts to pull together the pieces on the overall direction of developing autonomous ships. Large fully autonomous ships remain elusive owing to a wide number of issues related to technology that is not yet available, societal issues such as how they operate with conventional ships, legal issues, and most importantly high costs. However, ship automation provides a more practical route towards this future goal. Systems can be added to parts of the ship that can automate either data collection tasks or heavy labor tasks. The cost for ship automation projects would be considerably less than developing a fully autonomous ship and would provide near-term benefits to shipowners. While fully autonomous ships are a long-term prospect in the future, how far into the future is uncertain yet often things can happen sooner than people expect.
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Topping, P. (2023). Autonomous Ships: Where Is It Going from Here?. In: Johansson, T.M., Fernández, J.E., Dalaklis, D., Pastra, A., Skinner, J.A. (eds) Autonomous Vessels in Maritime Affairs. Studies in National Governance and Emerging Technologies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24740-8_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24740-8_20
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