from Hacker News

Rolls-Royce and Google Cloud attempt to make autonomous ships a reality

by pmulv on 1/17/18, 7:04 PM with 12 comments

• by steve19 on 1/17/18, 10:07 PM

  They will fail not because it cannot be done, but no union member will load these ships nor unload them. The real problem is not going to be technical, it will be political.

  The only way it could be done now is create non union ports on both ends of the route and never have your ships dock at unionised ports, where they would be blacklisted for ever going to a non unionised port and might even suffer sabotage.

  Stevedore unions around the world cooperate with each other and are all corrupt, have rampart theft and use violence to bully members and non members into submission. You seen The Wire?

  I worked in the shipping industry. Never again.

• by DannyB2 on 1/17/18, 10:38 PM

  Will robot ships be more attractive to pirates? Or can the ships autonomously use lethal force to repel pirates?

  What about if they encounter another ship in distress?

  Or people in the water in distress?

  Who then turn out to be a pirate ruse?

• by sien on 1/17/18, 10:05 PM

  Does anyone have an idea of how much the cost of staff is for a container ship?

  With crews of ~15-25 per ship and most of the staff coming from low wage countries is it significant?