R
olls-Royce opened a state-of-the-art
research facility in Turku, Finland, on
25 January 2018. The goal of the R&D
Centre is to develop the technologies Rolls-
Royce and its partners require to shape
the future of an increasingly more auton-
omous global shipping industry.
Iiro Lindborg, General Manager,
Remote & Autonomous, reports that the
new R&D Centre is running very well, and
is, in fact, the only research centre in the
world dedicated to remote and autono-
“
Part of the
R&D Centre
is the ‘experience
space’.
mous ship operations.
“Part of the R&D Centre is the ‘expe-
rience space’, a showroom of cutting edge
ship intelligence technologies, including a
remote operations centre for controlling
ships, and demonstrations of the new
Rolls-Royce Intelligent Awareness system,
which uses multiple sensors to give much
improved visibility for ships’ crews,” Lind-
borg explains.
TARGETING 2020
The R&D centre has a mix of marine engi-
neers, ship designers and software devel-
opers. Talking about the expectations
for the R&D Centre, Lindborg says that
the Centre is really pushing the develop-
ment of new technologies for remote and
autonomous operations.
“We are targeting the first commer-
cial application of an autonomous vessel
by the end of the decade. At first, those
are likely to be coastal ships, such as tugs
or ferries.”
According to Lindborg, Rolls-Royce
originally had a slower route in mind for
autonomous ships. “When you consider
ocean-going ships, we initially projected
autonomy by 2035, but we now believe
that will happen much sooner, sometime
in the 2020s,” he says, adding that the
rapid pace of development means that the
company has been able to bring that date
forward every year. Rolls-Royce launched
its first autonomous ship development pro-
ject UXUS (User Experience for Complex
Systems) in 2012.
The new R&D Centre enables Rolls-
Royce and its partners to carry out projects
focused on autonomous navigation, the
24
seatec 2/2018
Karno Tenovuo, Rolls-Royce Senior Vice President, Ship Intelligence.