Tomorrow’s Cargo Ships Will Use Augmented Reality to Sail the Seas

The tug boat bridge of the future will be fully customizable and feature augmented reality. Photo: VTT

By 2025, the first batch of autonomous vehicles will be driving through your neighborhood. But what about cargo ships? They’ll still have humans at the helm–at least most of the time–and this is the augmented reality bridge they’ll use to traverse the high seas.

The massive tiller and towering consoles are gone, replaced with minimalist workstations facing floor-to-ceiling windows that serve as a vast head-up display. The ship’s navigation information is overlaid in front of the crew, along with other vessel’s routes and obstacles that could be obscured by fog or rain. At night, thermal cameras display live video over the window to let watchmen keep tabs on what’s ahead.

After inputting the ship’s destination, the navigation system determines the most economical route and uses a sea ice analyzer to avoid a Titanic redux.

The bridge concept was developed by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Rolls-Royce. Beyond its multi-ton, high-dollar luxury barges, Rolls has a storied history in maritime development, building and developing engines, along with a host of other marine and aviations systems.

The bridge of the future also extends to tug boats, with the OX concept that automatically detects the captain and then configures the workstation to both their size and needs. The user interface is fully adjustable for usability and visibility, and places augmented reality markers on the ship it’s towing to help with deckhand placement, predict the route of the vessel, and get real-time winch information.

But autonomous systems are going to make their way into large vessels in the near future, and VTT and Rolls-Royce are already working on the first round of systems, which initially include remote controls that can be commanded from the bridge or on land.

“In terms of the technology required, operating a container vessel by remote control is already a real possibility,” VTT says in a release. “However, before fully unmanned vessels can be launched on seas, widespread public approval is also required.”

That’s going to happen before Rolls and VTT make the bridge of the future a reality, with plans to deploy the first remote-controlled ship in the coming years.