Study on technical issues related to the introduction of maritime autonomous surface ship

1.1 Background and Purpose of Study

Currently, large changes are occurring across industries owing to a paradigm shift called the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the emergence of new technologies and services. South Korea is also seeing large industrial transformations in the shipbuilding industry (one of the pillars of South Korea's manufacturing industries), through changes in products and factories using the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, sensors, and big data analysis. The shipbuilding industry is now in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and a recession, and the importance of maritime autonomous surface ship (Mass) is drawing global attention as a means to address these challenges.

The European Union has established the Horizon 2020 strategy to strengthen research, development, and innovation, and to expand investments. According to this strategy, governments and public organizations focus on their roles as ecosystem creators, and the private sector takes the leadership in technology development. Thus, the actual users actively participate in technology development.

China, a major competitor to South Korea in the shipbuilding industry, formed the Unmanned Ship Cargo Alliance for the development of Mass, and began developing them with leading companies such as DNV-GL and ABB. In addition, Japan is promoting the projects at the national level, and has completed step 2 of a project for a smart ship application platform with the participation of shipyards, equipment vendors, shipping companies, and classification societies [1]. This indicates that South Korea's competitors are already ahead in regard to demonstration tests, international standards, and equipment preoccupation. Although South Korea's large shipbuilders (Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, Samsung Heavy Industries, and Hyundai Heavy Industries) have established development roadmaps and are conducting research, cooperation between the government and industry remains insufficient.

Since 2018, a smart MASS shipping and port operation service development project (fund: 584.77 billion KRW) has been conducted for developing medium-sized Mass, through the development of autonomous navigation equipment and systems under the planning of government ministries (Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries). However, a preliminary feasibility study has concluded that it should not be implemented.

In 2019, a pre-feasibility study on a MASS technology development project (fund: 160.32 billion KRW) was conducted through re-planning, with a goal of the early establishment of a commercialization foundation, through the development of MASS core technologies and systematic verifications. Consequently, the scientific, technological, policy, and economic feasibilities were all derived for the project implementation, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1:

Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) results for pre-feasibility study for maritime autonomous surface ship development in 2019

Recently, many policy studies have been conducted on issues regarding Mass. Park et al. [2] conducted an analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and reported that the industries that would be affected by the introduction of MASS were those concerning ship safety, responsibility/compensation, cargo management, crew, ship equipment, shipping, and ports and logistics. They derived the major issues in each area.

Based on existing studies using a quantitative approach (e.g., AHP), studies on qualitative aspects are required. In this context, this study interviews experts in the industry, education, and research fields of the shipbuilding industry in regards to practical technical research problems, using an in-depth interview method. We analyze the opinions of these experts to derive development directions and implementation strategies for the introduction of Mass in Korea, and present strategic implications.

1.2 Literature review

An examination of previous works reveals that studies on control management and operation technologies for Mass are mixed with studies on systems and policies, and there is confusion regarding terminology. Various terms are used for a MASS, such as smart ship, digital ship, remote control ship, unmanned ship, and automation ship. However, the 99th Maritime Safety Committee of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) began to establish the regulatory scope for the introduction of the MASS, and tentatively defined MASS as follows:

“Maritime Autonomous Surface Ship (MASS) is defined as a ship which, to a varying degree, can operate independently of human interaction.” [3]

The present study analyzed previous domestic research (2016–2019) on Mass, and the results are outlined in Table 2.

Table 2:

Previous research on maritime autonomous surface ship

To summarize the previous studies, they investigated the introduction, directions, and main issues in MASS, generally from a legal perspective. It appears that these previous works focused on a specific perspective and are somewhat insufficient for a syntactic approach to Mass. Research on Mass needs to be conducted from social and technical perspectives for introduction and activation, as well as from a legal perspective.

2.1 Research on in-depth interview method

An in-depth interview is a qualitative research method in empirical social science research. The representative method of social science research can be said to be statistics, and it has developed greatly in the United States, as a methodology called “social research.” This method has developed as a quantitative analysis and structured survey method. In contrast, qualitative research methods have the advantage that they can extract subjective and subjective positions or ideas in specialized fields that are missed by statistics [4]. In other words, whereas quantitative research emphasizes accuracy in quantifying linguistic (symbolic) tests, qualitative research is related to the understanding of texts. These methods have been developed with significant effort directed to identifying the true meanings behind external structures, under the belief that not only language can be understood or reconstructed linguistically, but also all things derived from humans [5]. The differences between qualitative and quantitative research are outlined in Table 3.

Table 3:

Comparison of qualitative and quantitative research

In-depth interviews can be classified into group and individual interviews. The individual interview method used in this study was for the researcher to ask and then listen to the opinions of individuals, and was mainly used to gather in-depth and professional opinions from experts in specific fields. Thus, it had an advantage in its ability to collect expert opinions that might have been difficult to obtain from the general public. However, it had disadvantages, e.g., it was difficult to select and contact interviewees, and required a significant amount of time [6].

Interview methods are largely classified into four types: informal interviews, unstructured interviews, semi-structured interviews, and structured interviews.

2.2 Research model and survey design

This study performed semi-structured individual in-depth interviews, and tried to induce responses and collect data from the interviewees as appropriate for the research purposes in a natural communication process, while using only the minimum number of questions. As the main theme of the interview, we adopted a significant research problem, i.e., technical issues when introducing a MASS. Then, we approached a smaller problem in the previous research, the “priority of the analysis results from using an AHP among the five major issues when introducing a MASS”. The results of the priority analysis for policy elements are outlined in Table 4.

Table 4:

AHP analysis result of maritime autonomous surface ship introduction issues

In the priority analysis results, ① autonomous navigation, control, and maintenance technologies showed the highest weight of 17.8%, followed by ② ship security systems, such as preparation for piracy and cyber terrorism at 13.0%, and ③ changes in marine accident types, at 10.7%.

The in-depth interview was performed such that the researcher asked questions, and requested opinions based on a prepared questionnaire. After the interview, additional questions were asked again in writing, to revisit the large and small research issues. In this way, the research was designed to enable cross-checking, by allowing views not yet drawn from the interviewees during the interview process to be mentioned again. The research model of this study is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1:

Research Model

The specific research problems addressed in the in-depth interview in this study are as follows.

• ◆ First, what are the major issues in terms of autonomous navigation, control, and maintenance technologies in the introduction of a MASS?
• ◆ Second, what are the major issues in terms of ship security systems (such as preparation for piracy and cyber terrorism) in the introduction of the MASS?
• ◆ Third, what are the major issues in terms of changes in marine accident types in the introduction of the MASS?

Before the interview, a brief explanation of the research model was given to the interviewee. If the interviewee moved away from the topic, the interviewee was naturally guided to return to the research problem at hand, and the answer to the research problem was cross-checked (4th step). For the in-depth interviewees, experts in the shipbuilding industry were selected in such a way as to reflect the viewpoints of the industrial, educational, and research circles. The selected companies and organizations are outlined in Table 5.

Table 5:

Configuration of in-depth interviews

3.1 Overview of in-depth interviews

The interviewees selected for individual in-depth interviews in this study were nine experts from eight companies and organizations. The in-depth interviews were conducted twice in pre-set periods, by a researcher who visited the work sites of the companies and organizations. However, for some interviewees, interviews were replaced with written responses owing to time constraints.

The expertise of the interviewees was verified based on their careers and positions in the corresponding fields. The average work career of the nine interviewees was approximately 18.7 years. The careers and positions of the interviewees are outlined in Table 6.

Table 6:

In-depth interviewees and details

3.2 Results of in-depth interviews

The opinions of the interviewees were summarized for each question of the study from the results of the individual in-depth interviews, and then were classified around common opinions that appeared frequently. In addition, the opinions of the industrial, educational, and research circles were analyzed using a visualization chart, and the frequency of opinions was analyzed using a word cloud technique with the R Program.

The expert opinions regarding autonomous navigation control and maintenance, which was the subject of the first question, are briefly outlined in Table 7.

Table 7:

Results of interviews regarding autonomous control and maintenance

An analysis of the in-depth interview results of the experts indicated that the main goal of industrial experts was to develop navigation control and monitoring technologies for autonomous navigation. It could be seen that they were establishing concrete development strategies in four categories: navigation planning, navigation monitoring, navigation control, and self-problem solving.

Meanwhile, the educational experts claimed that standardization must occur first. As Mass must be built for all ship owners worldwide, they suggested that we should participate in the early stages of preparation for the technical standards required for the IMO’s performance, design, and production standards. The research experts suggested the importance of R&D tasks, such as determining international cooperation tasks for technical developments in commercialization, developing commissoning and demonstration technologies, and developing performance evaluation procedures and manuals.

For the second question, the expert opinions regarding ship security such as piracy or cyber terrorism, as well as the corresponding technology developments in terms of autonomous navigation control, are briefly outlined in Table 8. An analysis of the results of in-depth interviews with experts for the second question indicated that the industrial experts proposed responding with technology, i.e., installing multiple network security devices from a satellite communication network to the ship network terminals, while focusing on existing ship security approaches against pirates. The educational experts presented opinions from a macroscopic viewpoint of establishing and implementing cybersecurity systems, emphasizing that ship monitoring systems and network equipment are currently exposed to serious dangers owing to a lack of security. The research experts presented opinions regarding the development of new types of ship safety equipment and devices, preparation of a strict verification system for quality levels, and preparation for the safety management service industry, such as certification, inspection, and consultation regarding equipment and devices. The third question was related to liability for accidents, rather than technical issues. The expert opinions on the changes caused by changes in the types of marine accidents are briefly summarized in Table 9.

Table 8:

Result of interviews regarding ship security system

Table 9:

Results of interviews regarding changes of marine accident type

An analysis of the in-depth interview results for the third question indicated that the industrial experts expected a need to develop outboard hazard detection technology based on the information of multiple sensors, owing to increasing numbers of accidents from human errors. The education experts mentioned that although sensing technology cannot identify wooden boats properly as it mainly relies on radar, human errors nevertheless can be reduced if this technology is developed reliably. However, they expected that it would take more time to apply it in the field, owing to the passive attitude of the shipping industry (including shipping companies and ship owners) regarding various accidents.

The research experts suggested that the establishment of dedicated ports for Mass would be more effective, as accommodating Mass and general ships together could make the related institutions and systems more complicated and difficult.

3.3 Results of word cloud frequency analysis

The results from the in-depth interviews with industry, education, and research experts were combined, and the frequency of key words was analyzed using a word cloud technique (a big data analysis method). The results are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2:

Text analysis result with word clouds

According to the word cloud analysis result, the word with the highest frequency was navigation, followed by technology, system, unmanned, liability, and development. The frequency of navigation (first) was dominantly high, accounting for approximately 9% of all keywords (101 times). This indicated that the navigational aspect of the MASS is a major interest; navigation control and navigation management were mainly mentioned. The frequencies of five keywords were similar, i.e., technology (42 times), system (33 times), unmanned (32 times), liability (32 times), and development (31 times). This result suggested that both technology and liability are major interests.