ABS approves Japanese autonomous shipping project

“This is an exciting time for innovation and technology breakthroughs in maritime. ABS understands that autonomous systems are not stand-alone products but fully integrated with vessel infrastructure and the result of numerous advancements in a wide variety of mechanisms including sensors, imaging, connectivity, machine learning and application of systems engineering in ship design,” said ABS senior vice president and chief technology officer Patrick Ryan.

MTI Co DFFAS+ project sub-director Hideyuki Ando said, “We are grateful for the AiP of our fully autonomous ship framework APExS-auto from ABS. We have been working on the system design of autonomous ships using the model-based systems engineering approach. The AIP validates our thinking and approach in light of the framework of ABS, which has deep knowledge of the safety of complex systems, including autonomous ships.”

“Sufficient risk assessment is essential for the development and introduction of complex systems such as autonomous ships. The development of an appropriate and reasonable risk assessment framework is necessary for the social implementation of autonomous ships, and we believe this collaboration with ABS is a milestone towards this end,” added DFFAS＋project director, JMS executive officer and general manager of Marine Technical Group Captain Satoru Kuwahara. 

The AiP provides a roadmap for autonomous vessels complying with the APExS-auto framework to qualify for possible ABS class notations such as AUTONOMOUS (NAV, MNV, RO3) for navigation, manoeuvring, collision detection and collision avoidance.

The class society said it will continue to work together with MTI and JMS as they refine the framework for application on use case vessels.

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