Energy Efficient Maritime Transport through Autonomous Observations of Ocean and Ice - EMTOI

Research Project, 2019

Any marine energy and transport related activity benefit greatly from correct description of the Meteorological and Oceanographic (MetOcean) conditions that a marine structure will encounter. One of the key issues to safe and efficient voyage planning of manned and unmanned ships is the quality of MetOcean data and how it is used in voyage planning systems and ship performance models. For the collection of MetOcean data and testing of models for performance, navigation and voyage planning the proposing team has access to a 3-meter unmanned surface vessel (USV) owned by the Department of Mechanics and Maritime Sciences at Chalmers and a 6-meter long autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that is managed by GU. Currents, waves and wind will be observed with the USV, while sea ice conditions will be measured by the AUV.

The purpose of this project is to strengthen interdisciplinary work between Chalmers and GU on energy efficient sea transportations. An important goal with the project is to enable the researchers to work together and benefit from synergy effects from ongoing national and international projects where the researchers participate. We aim to demonstrate that our joint efforts can be applied on smart and optimized autonomous ships that will operate more energy-efficiently in comparison with manned ships.