The first autonomous ship in the world Yara Birkeland of the Norwegian company Yara will launch in 2018, and is expected to be fully autonomous in 2020.
According to Wall Street Journal, the Norwegian construction Yara Birkeland will use GPS, radar, cameras and sensors to navigate between other vessels in busy harbors and arrive at docks by itself. It is expected to cost about $25 million dollars, which is about three times more money than a typical container ship of the same size. But investors say that, without the need for fuel or crew, annual operating costs should drop by as much as 90 percent. The ship will become autonomous in stages, Yara said.
"Yara Birkeland will initially operate as a manned vessel, will move by remote control in 2019 and is expected to be able to perform fully autonomously tripa from 2020,” the company said in a post on the website her since May.
The Birkeland ship with a capacity of 100 containers has been developed by the agricultural company Yara International and the technology company Kongsberg Gruppen jointly. It is planned at the end of 2018 to start transporting fertilizers from a unit production in the port of Larvik, about 37 miles away.
Yara Petter Ostbo, head of The Wall Street Journal, said the company will look to invest in larger ships capable of longer journeys as soon as international regulations for autonomous ships are set. "Perhaps even to transfer our fertilizer from the Netherlands all the way to Brazil".