Reports and articles

This report is part of Work Package 10 of the AEGIS project. This Work Package is focused on Use-Case C, which is about the revitalization of small and medium enterprise ports and terminals and their relocation out of city centres. This report on technology gaps and regulatory challenges in Danish case studies shows how port terminal infrastructure development plays a key role in the development of a new waterborne transport system for Europe. This report highlighted the impact of the AEGIS concept as experienced by Port of Aalborg and by Port of Vordingborg, as small and medium enterprise ports. On the side of technological gaps, the report analyses gaps related to digitalisation in communication and standardisation, cargo handling and infrastructural support for new autonomous vessels, namely the capabilities of small and medium enterprise ports. It is concluded that the biggest technological gap in port terminal automation is the ability for a system to react constructively to unknown and uncontrolled objects i.e., manually controlled equipment vs. automated equipment. On the side of regulatory challenges, the main conclusion is that the ownership structure of Danish ports politicizes some of the decisions of the management, which may hinder on efficiency for the sake of social sustainability. The lack of a clear incentive structure to develop port infrastructure is another regulatory challenge, as it introduces lack of foreseeability for terminal operators. This report generally concludes that there are gaps and challenges that cannot be addressed at the local level alone.

AEGIS is a next generation short sea shipping logistics concept that is currently under development. The objective is to solve some of the challenges faced by today's short sea shipping and maritime transport. This document, D2.5 Resilience in automated transport systems, is part of the AEGIS project work package 2, Logistics system redesign and resilience. This WP develops new methods for design of logistics systems for highly automated waterborne transport systems, where the method described in this report can be used to identify threats and possible barriers to be implemented with the ambition of reducing the consequences of an event. The whole work package objective is to emphasises possibilities inherent in autonomous ships, such as the possibilities for scaling down ship sizes to increase frequency and differentiate speeds, the use of more standardized cargo units and fully automated cargo handling in small and medium ports as well in transhipment terminals. The issue of cargo clearance (customs, phytosanitary, ISPS etc.) is also an important consideration, in particular for automation of work processes. Most of the actual redesign is done in the use cases (WP8 to WP10), but WP2 will provide tools and methods for analysing effects of redesigns and provide guidance for the process.

The European maritime transport policy recognizes the importance of the waterborne transport systems as key elements for sustainable growth in Europe. A major goal is to transfer more than 50% of road transport to rail or waterways within 2050. To meet this challenge waterway transport needs to get more attractive and overcome its disadvantages. Therefore, it is necessary to develop new knowledge and technology and find a completely new approach to short sea and inland waterways shipping. A key element in this is automation of ships, ports and administrative tasks aligned to requirements of different European regions. One main goal in the AEGIS project is to increase the efficiency of the waterways transport with the use of higher degrees of automation corresponding with new and smaller ship types to reduce costs and secure higher frequency by feeders and provide multimodal green logistics solutions combining short sea shipping with rail and road transport.

This paper gives a summary of previously published papers on the definition of autonomy for ships, how this relates to different crewing regimes, and the terminology to be used. A conclusion is that autonomy should be retained as a descriptive term, but that we should distinguish between “full autonomy” and “constrained autonomy”, where the latter is the more relevant term for ships today. The proposed classification of autonomy is related to both degree of automation and degree of human control and will be presented as a matrix with generic classes of autonomy. This matrix is also transformed to a set of more practically useful levels of autonomy based on likely organization of crew on land or on the ship. The paper has mainly been written based on our work with maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS) but is also applicable to other types of surface vessels, e.g. inland waterway vessels.

This document is AEGIS deliverable D2.2, Effects of standardized cargo units, which is the end result of work package 2 (WP2) task 2.2. This task focuses on analysing possibilities for more use of standard cargo units in maritime transport and, specially, in the AEGIS proposals

This document is AEGIS deliverable 2.3 "Handling export, import and security constraints" and gives an overview of ISPS processes and documents, and also of customs and cargo clearance processes and documents. It is based on questionnaires and workshops held with the project partners. The answers were reported both written and by having teleconferences.
Further, the report describes how the mother and daughter concept may affect the ISPS and customs clearance processes. This is relevant when transhipment is done between the mother and daughter vessels.

This document is AEGIS deliverable D10.1 "Potential transfer from road transport to short-sea-shipping in Denmark" and examines the potential gross volume that can be shifted from road transport to short-sea-shipping in Denmark, categorized by different goods types. This encompasses analyses of the price structure for transportation of the goods by both road transport and short-sea-shipping; including an analysis of last mile / destination delivery (cf. AEGIS, WP10, D10.1 Case C description). The report analyses all relevant goods in Denmark, including national and international goods. The report firstly identifies the type of goods that can be shifted (through time-value analysis), and subsequently includes discrete analyses of national and international goods that can be shifted. Analyses are on a regional level.

The European maritime transport policy recognizes the importance of the waterborne transport systems as key elements for sustainable growth in Europe. A major goal is to transfer more than 50% of road transport to rail or waterways within 2050. However, waterways are at a disadvantage as they normally depend on transhipment and land transport to and from final destination. To meet this challenge we need a completely new approach to short sea and inland waterways shipping in Europe. This needs to include ships as well as ports and the digital information exchanges between them. A key element in this is automation of ships, ports and administrative tasks. The AEGIS project has been funded by the EU Commission to develop new knowledge and technology to address this challenge.

The concept of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) has gained much popularity in recent years, particularly in commercial settings where the name industrial autonomous mobile robot (IAMR) is proposed. In addition to automatic guided vehicles and automated mining trucks, IAMR also includes autonomous merchant ships. AMR is an old concept which was first introduced in the 1980s. Although the concept of AMRs is old and broadly used, there is still no common definition of autonomy when mobile robots are concerned. This paper will review some of the most known definitions and develop a taxonomy for autonomy in mobile autonomous robots. This will be used to compare the different definitions of robotic autonomy. This paper will mainly look at industrial autonomous mobile robots, i.e. systems that are designed to operate with a clear commercial objective in mind and which are normally supported by a remote control centre. This means that the robot is not fully autonomous, but to varying degrees dependent on humans in some control and monitoring functions.

The Concept of Operations, or ConOps, has become a central document for the specification, design and approval of autonomous ship systems and operations in the absence of prescriptive rules and regulations. The flexible structure of the ConOps and the fact that it is written in prose text makes it very accessible for all involved stakeholders, but also prone to discrepancies between the descriptions and the actual design. This paper proposes a description framework, for autonomous ship systems and operations, that covers the information items requested through the ConOps. The proposed framework has the potential to facilitate development of a formalized ConOps, which in turn could lead to a standardization of the current approval procedures for autonomous ship systems and operations.