Condition monitoring for automated ferries

Automated ferries can be considered as an important step along the road to autonomous vessels(Levander, 2017). With the currently available technologies, ferries can easily be automated to perform predefined journeys. This means that it can be retro-fitted to many existing ferries around the world, creating significant scope for the future roll out of the concept. The shift from having a crew on board to having land-based technicians/operators observing and/or controlling the ferry remotely will no doubt revolutionize the ferry industry (Andrews, 2016). Even though the idea is promising the major challenge is to make the operation reliable and safe.

This paper aims at investigating the important of continuous monitoring of the conditions of key elements to achieve high reliability in future automated ferries. The full paper will identify key elements in an automated ferry such as propulsion system and power generation system and lists the parameters that should be monitored in these systems to assess their condition. Moreover, algorithms that can be used to assess the health of individual subsystems, and development of a reliability centered maintenance program for the ferry will be discussed.