Shipbuilding company Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) has completed the demonstration of a new ship collision avoidance system, known as Samsung Autonomous Ship (SAS).
Under the demonstration, SHI’s independently developed remote autonomous navigation system stopped two autonomous ships from colliding by alerting each other in seas off the southwestern island of Gageo, South Korea.
According to the company, this at-sea demonstration was the first of its kind globally.
The two ships involved in the trial were a 9,200t ship of Mokpo National Maritime University and 300t tug of SHI.
Last October, the company successfully sailed its 300t remote autonomous vessel in seas off Geoje Island through a remote-control system at a research centre situated in Daejeon.
SHI claims that its solution has easy-to-use features, along with the latest ICT technologies, such as a thermal imaging camera.
SHI ship and offshore research centre head Kim Hyun-jo said: “This demonstration shows that currents, waves and wind is a complex range from the movement of an autonomous vessel to the movement of an autonomous vessel on the actual sea.”
The company plans to commercialise the SAS system by next year.
In February, SHI secured an order for five 15,000 twenty-foot equivalent liquefied natural gas (LNG)-powered container ships from a client in Asia.
The total value of the order was approximately $708m.
These container ships will be supplied in a sequence, starting from July 2023.
Additionally, the vessels will be equipped with several fuel-saving devices and SVESSEL, a smart ship solution of SHI’s own development.
