Duisburg/Waltrop.
The autonomous inland waterway vessel sets off on a test drive on the Dortmund-Ems Canal. Scientists from Duisburg are working on further development.
It seems to be a twist of fate. Exactly on this one strike dayon which employees at ports and locks have also stopped work, breaks the autonomous driving Inner ship “Niedersachsen 22” for a short trip with NRW-Umweltund Transport Minister Oliver Krischer on board. For a brief moment, the sun smiles down on “Lower Saxony” and its guests, the water of the Dortmund-Ems Canal shimmers green, the wind whistles and lets the flags of the shipping company HGK flutter properly. With the backdrop of an industrial monument, the old one boat lift Henrichenburg in Waltropin the neck wants NRW head into the future.
Barge has been equipped with cameras and sensors
The 100 meter long cargo ship, which not only loaded particles for the minister but also more than 1000 tons of iron ore that day, is a test ship with which researchers from the Duisburg Development Center for Ship Technology and Transport Systems (DST) want to figure out how inland waterway vessels will be able to do it all on their own in the future with help artificial intelligence can drive.
The “Niedersachsen” has been upgraded for this; with more than five cameras, lasers, additional radar systems and other sensors. And that is all that distinguishes this ship from others, said project manager Jan Oberhagemann, head of the DST department for autonomous driving.
The conversion of this ship was relatively easy because the bridge in the driver’s cabin already had basic digital equipment, explains Frédéric Etienne Kracht from the Chair of Mechatronics at the University of Duisburg. This is more difficult with other laboratory ships like the Ernst Kramer from the 1960s.
This additional digital equipment is intended to ensure that data is collected, merged and used as a basis to calculate a collision-free course and then drive it.
Shortly after 3 p.m., “Lower Saxony” starts moving. Human hands are still needed to take off the ropes. The skipper starts the ship himself. A few minutes later and a few meters further, he slows down and hands over the helm to the artificial intelligence. Then it gets exciting, oncoming traffic from the other direction! Another barge is approaching. Everything is going well, the ships pass each other at a good distance.
Port laboratory in Duisburg is being planned
This test drive on Monday is part of the “AutoBin” project funded by the state and federal government. The scientists at the University of Duisburg-Essen have been working on autonomous solutions for inland navigation since 2019. The newly built autonomous research ship “Ella” was only christened at the beginning of March, and another ship is in the works, as Kracht describes in an interview with the NRZ. It should even be possible to set up a camp bed on it so that you can spend the night on a research trip in the port. And in May, a port laboratory is to be opened in Duisburg, where research will then be carried out into automated goods handling.
The Green Minister Krischer sees in the autonomous inland navigation a future solution. 25 percent of the goods would be transported via the climate-friendly transport route. He wants “North Rhine-Westphalia to remain the number one inland shipping country,” he says this Monday. And the skills shortage does not stop at inland shipping either.
However, until a ship actually independent and without people on board, it will probably take a few more years, experts estimate. Especially since the researchers have found that there is a lot of catching up to do in digitization. Locks and port facilities are not digitized and outdated, says Kracht. And the network coverage is sometimes still so insufficient that the sensor signals cannot penetrate and therefore cannot calculate a course.
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