Unmanned vessels

[Momac]

If there can be unmanned vessels at sea perhaps there is scope for similar on inland waterways, although not under sail.

 

 

 

[blackrose]

How are unmanned vessels going to get though locks on the inland waterways? Seems like a bit of a non-starter to me.

[Mike Tee]

They will have electric motors charged by flexible solar panels covering the sails. These will be guaranteed for 12 months providing it does not get windy. Can’t see a problem with that..........

[Jen-in-Wellies]

23 minutes ago, MartynG said:

If there can be unmanned vessels at sea perhaps there is scope for similar on inland waterways, although not under sail.

 

They aren't ready yet. A human crew member would have spotted that the boat is too tall to fit under that bridge long before it got so close.

Edited May 21, 2022 by Jen-in-Wellies

[magnetman]

Unmanned pleasure boats is an interesting solution for keen gongoozlers.

[Momac]

1 hour ago, blackrose said:

How are unmanned vessels going to get though locks on the inland waterways? Seems like a bit of a non-starter to me.

Locks can be automated  

46 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

They aren't ready yet. A human crew member would have spotted that the boat is too tall to fit under that bridge long before it got so close.

It is easily possible to determine a bridge clearance  in advance  of a journey

[harrybsmith]

As I make stuff that's semi-autonomous for a living then  the thought has crossed my mind. Surprisingly would be a bit of a pain to do, I don't think you could do much above water sensor wise, I think you'd need to do all the sensing below water which brings its own challenges 

[Jen-in-Wellies]

7 minutes ago, MartynG said:

It is easily possible to determine a bridge clearance  in advance  of a journey

It is, but people don't. They even ignore the warning signs on the approach. There is a bridge with 11'8" clearance in America that is nicknamed the can opener bridge. There is a web cam overlooking it that captures so many vehicles getting trashed that there is a dedicated web site of videos.

http://11foot8.com/

 

[Stroudwater1]

Would the unmanned craft be wired to make the biggest errors in front of Gongoozlers too? 
 

[Jen-in-Wellies]

An autonomous ship has made two attempts so far to cross the Atlantic. Broke down both times. Turns out, they still need one of those obsolete meatsacks around to fix them.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/11/mayflower_autonomous_ship/

 

[magpie patrick]

I fancy a pair of autonomous walking boots, they could walk up Snowdon and save me the trouble... 

[gatekrash]

There was an autonomous boat which left Plymouth a couple of years ago for the Mayflower 400 celebrations, travelling to the US.

 

I seem to recall they had to follow it with a manned boat as it was registered as a commercial vessel and the only way they could meet the rules regarding maintaining a proper look out meant it had to be in sight of a person at all times. 

 

I don't think it actually made it all the way across.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

11 minutes ago, gatekrash said:

There was an autonomous boat which left Plymouth a couple of years ago for the Mayflower 400 celebrations, travelling to the US.

 

I seem to recall they had to follow it with a manned boat as it was registered as a commercial vessel and the only way they could meet the rules regarding maintaining a proper look out meant it had to be in sight of a person at all times. 

 

I don't think it actually made it all the way across.

See previous but two reply.

[robtheplod]

8 hours ago, blackrose said:

How are unmanned vessels going to get though locks on the inland waterways? Seems like a bit of a non-starter to me.

automated vlokkies?

[enigmatic]

6 hours ago, harrybsmith said:

As I make stuff that's semi-autonomous for a living then  the thought has crossed my mind. Surprisingly would be a bit of a pain to do, I don't think you could do much above water sensor wise, I think you'd need to do all the sensing below water which brings its own challenges 

Reckon the main problem is that whilst all of it's likely to be technically solvable, I can't see people spending millions mapping the quirks inland waterways in great detail and training ML algorithms to handle bank effect and wind conditions and weird hand gesture signals for a tiny UK market dominated by the sort of people who actually like steering their boats and are generally more interested in paying money for 1930s engines than the latest tech!

 

Can't imagine redoing Foxton with automatic guillotine gates to allow boats to be fully autonomous being a cheap or popular move either!

 

That said, an amount of automation as limited as operating the Morse lever from a phone app so the boat could exit the lock whilst I shut the gates could be handy to me as a single hander

[magpie patrick]

I think Enigmatic has nailed it with their first two paragraphs. Automation is pointless - ours is primarily a leisure pursuit, we do it for fun. 

[ditchcrawler]

5 hours ago, magpie patrick said:

I fancy a pair of autonomous walking boots, they could walk up Snowdon and save me the trouble... 

 

[Momac]

3 hours ago, magpie patrick said:

I think Enigmatic has nailed it with their first two paragraphs. Automation is pointless - ours is primarily a leisure pursuit, we do it for fun. 

With regard to leisure use I agree. The same applies to journeys by sea.

 

But for freight traffic a different matter .

Use of the canals for freight was , after all, the originally intended purpose. 

Re-introduction of freight traffic might be good for the inland waterways . 

 

[magpie patrick]

24 minutes ago, MartynG said:

 

But for freight traffic a different matter .

Use of the canals for freight was , after all, the originally intended purpose. 

 

 

 Indeed, and I think autonomous barges have been trialled somewhere on the continent recently - I'll have to leaf through recent back issues of IWI to see if I can find it. 

[Phoenix_V]

https://focusonbelgium.be/en/business/autonomous-vessel-being-tested-european-first

 

As far as I can tell these are semi autonomous being linked by radio to a remote control centre, presumably manned -  there is a crew member on board whose main occupation seems to be reading his mobile phone and lowering the mast for the one low bridge.

 

A push tug operates the other barge used on  the Ijzer in the normal way with a crew of just 2, apparently husband and wife so the saving is not that apparent.