Towards MASS-Ready Ports: Mitigating Blind Spots with Local Sensor Systems (LSS)

Kurzfassung

Due to technological developments in the maritime industry, the safe operation of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) will be one of the key challenges of the maritime infrastructure of the future and will consequently also place new demands on MASS ready ports. As stated in the EMSA 2024 report on marine casualties and incidents, even today most maritime accidents occur in port and coastal areas. Due to the high traffic density, local conditions and challenges caused by the infrastructure in these areas, pilots with regional knowledge are currently often brought on board to provide support. This pilotage is not possible for MASS, but local conditions will continue to be crucial for narrow harbor waters. Infrastructure such as cranes, bridges or even passing ships can create blind spots by obscuring the detection range of sensors mounted in the MASS. To increase safety and reduce complexity of navigational tasks for the MASS, these blind spots need to be closed. To address these issues, this paper proposes a concept for a MASS ready port utilizing shore-mounted sensors. These sensors monitor the port basin and report objects and traffic participants to the MASS vehicle creating a safe environment for future MASS operation in port areas similar to the already established Manage Automated Driving (MAD) concept in the automotive domain. The proposed concept considers how these blind spots can be fixed using these shore-based sensor setups and how the setup should look like based on LiDAR, RADAR and camera sensors currently used in maritime applications. For a proof of concept, a use case of the operation of an autonomous dredger in a limited area of the port of Emden (NPorts) in northern Germany is considered. For this purpose, historical maneuver data is used and then processed in a maritime traffic simulation with the help of a simulative sensor setup. This study investigates the necessity of shore-based sensor technology to support navigation in port waters for defined scenarios within the historical maneuver data.