Open AccessMeaningful Human Control in Autonomous Shipping: An Overview
Author(s) -
J. van den Broek,
James Griffioen,
M van der Drift
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
iop conference series. materials science and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1757-899X
pISSN - 1757-8981
DOI - 10.1088/1757-899x/929/1/012008
Subject(s) - competence (human resources) , workload , autonomy , computer science , automation , situation awareness , risk analysis (engineering) , control (management) , operator (biology) , resilience (materials science) , process management , construct (python library) , knowledge management , engineering , business , artificial intelligence , psychology , repressor , law , aerospace engineering , chemistry , operating system , social psychology , biochemistry , political science , transcription factor , thermodynamics , programming language , mechanical engineering , physics , gene
This paper presents an overview of the aspects related to meaningful human control in autonomous shipping. Autonomy is described as a multi-faceted construct including self-sufficiency and self-directedness, which are related to a range of conditions a ship can deal with. This means that autonomy levels will vary in different operational situations. As a consequence, active operator involvement and workload will fluctuate and will sometimes be unpredictable. In case of supervising multiple ships, it is not feasible to maintain a minimal level of situation awareness of all the ships. In order to facilitate operator situation awareness recovery and other human-automation collaboration principles an Intelligent Operator Support System concept is outlined. Whether the large-scale application of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships will provide equivalent safety and resilience levels will largely depend on the intelligence of the onboard control systems, the design quality of the human-autonomy collaboration system, and the competence and training level of the SC-operators.