Led by efforts to advance the integration of autonomous technologies in the maritime sector, classification society Lloyd’s Register (LR) and the Korea Research Institute of Ships & Ocean Engineering (KRISO) have entered a joint development program, focused on verifying and validating marine autonomous functions and operations to support a wider uptake of these systems.
As per LR, to ensure the safe application of a number of high-level autonomous technologies being developed or introduced right now, more systematic verification and validation (V&V) procedures must be undertaken.
For the past five years, KRISO has been building testbeds and related infrastructure for autonomous operations through the Korea Autonomous Surface Ship (KASS) project . Estimates show that this JDP could allow for more ‘practical, substantive and reliable’ V&V evaluations regarding the research institutes’ ongoing collaboration with LR.
“Verification and validation is a vital key for the safe, efficient and cost-effective commercialization of maritime autonomous surface ships,” said Chief Commercial Officer, LR, Andy McKeran .
“At present, we rely on risk-based verification on a case-by-case basis, but this JDP will lay the foundations for LR to set up more feasible and practical verification procedures that could become a global standard.”
The latest development program between LR and KRISO is focused on creating a comprehensive testing environment to integrate various verification technologies. These could assess the hardware, software and AI elements of marine autonomous surface ship (MASS) systems.
According to LR, it is expected that this approach would promote higher standards of security, reliability, and performance of MASS, enabling their wide-scale commercialization.
Reflecting on the collaboration—which might, in due time, be expanded to other UK and Korean partners working in autonomy— Keyyong Hong , President of KRISO said:
“Through the mutual collaboration between KRISO and LR, we will jointly pursue the development of autonomous surface ship operation technology and verification system technology. By leveraging our combined strengths, we will actively cooperate to lead the maritime industry in the commercialization of autonomous surface ships, technology standardization, and the expansion of digitalization.”
Aside from the KASS project, KRISO has taken several leaps forward regarding the endeavors to improve autonomous processes in maritime. In July this year, KRISO teamed up with the classification society ABS to advance commercial small modular reactor (SMR)-powered ships and floating SMR power generation platforms.
More recently, the institute signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the RISE Research Institutes of Sweden on cooperation in the maritime arena. The institutes disclosed that their joint effort would focus on speeding up advancements in innovative technology development in common areas.
On the other hand, in a bid to tackle the challenges of digitalization in the maritime sector, LR acquired Ocean Technologies Group (OTG), a human capital management and operational software company, from European private equity firm Oakley Capital. The acquisition has made it possible for LR to offer OTG’s solutions to over 30,000 vessels.
In the long run, it is hoped that OTG can be successfully integrated with LR’s digital business, LR OneOcean, to create a large software platform that could help speed up the digital transformation of the industry.