Singapore’s Keppel Offshore and Marine have successfully demonstrated the first autonomous tugboat, the MAJU 510. In doing so, Keppel O&M has established precedence in several areas, and the vessel has bagged many industry firsts. Among the accolades received are “being the first vessel in the world to receive the Autonomous and Remote control Navigation notations from ABS”, “being the first tug in South Asia that can be remotely controlled by joystick” and “being the first Singapore flagged vessel to receive the ‘Smart’ Notation from the Maritime and port authority Singapore”.
The vessel is capable of collision detection, avoidance, and autonomous point navigation and can be controlled by a joystick from the shore base. The link from the ship to shore for control utilizes a low latency 4.5G connection. The vessel itself is owned and operated by Keppel Smit and Towage but was upgraded by the technology arm of Keppel Offshore and Marine. This included the installation of multiple states of the art systems such as the ABB Ability, Marine pilot vision, and Marine pilot control. These systems utilize artificial intelligence to perform various tasks such as automation of navigational observations, risk assessment, decision making, and vessel control.
Keppel O&M and the vessel’s owner, Keppel Smit, and Towage intend to work with the MPA to refine the system further and run more tests. This involves tests for varying degrees of autonomous operations, interaction, and joint operations among other autonomous vessels and tests in denser traffic.
