The International Maritime Organization releases China's unmanned ship trial report proposal

An unmanned ship is a fully automatic surface robot that can navigate on the water surface according to preset tasks without remote control, with the help of precise satellite positioning and self-sensing. The English abbreviation is USV. Nowadays, many countries have begun to develop unmanned ships.Domestic unmanned ships are used for surveying and mapping, hydrology and water quality monitoring.Since it started selling the world's first water quality monitoring unmanned ship in 2013, Yunzhou's brand has quickly started. From the end of 2013 to the end of 2014, Yunzhou sold more than 70 unmanned ships to 31 cities in 14 provinces in China. It is expected that sales in 2016 are expected to exceed 100 million yuan. At present, Yunzhou is looking for agents in more than 10 countries and regions, including the United States, Russia, Brazil, and Southeast Asia, to sell unmanned ships to the world.

Recently, the IMO official website published the report on MASS trials completed by the Guangdong Maritime Safety Administration. This is my country’s first unmanned ship trial report approved by the IMO. The field of unmanned ships is an important breakthrough in the realization of "curve overtaking" in my country's shipping industry. This proposal was adopted by the IMO, marking a solid step taken by my country in participating in the international unmanned vessel legislation.

In June 2019, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) reviewed and passed the "Interim Guidelines for Trial Navigation of Autonomous Surface Ships" (hereinafter referred to as the "Guidelines") at the 101st Maritime Safety Committee (MSC 101). The General Assembly encourages all Contracting States to refer to the "Interim Guidelines", organize autonomous ships to conduct sea tests in accordance with their own actual conditions, and make suggestions for improvement of these Interim Guidelines based on actual sea trial practices, with a view to providing strong support for the promulgation of the "Guidelines" .

Guangdong Maritime Safety Administration, China Classification Society and Yunzhou Intelligent Company jointly organized a "Guideline" verification test in China. The project team is based on the "Somersault Cloud 0" autonomous cargo ship designed and manufactured by Yunzhou Intelligence and Wuhan University of Technology. Under the guidance of the Maritime Safety Administration of the Ministry of Transport of the People's Republic of China, the autonomous ship trial report was completed and submitted to the international Maritime Organization.

In August of this year, the International Maritime Organization completed this review and released the China Sea Trial Report on its official website. Chinese wisdom once again showed its talents in the international maritime business community.

Based on the trial practice of the "Somersault Cloud 0" unmanned ship under the auspices of the Guangdong Maritime Safety Administration, the program comprehensively covers the technical elements of intelligent navigation such as remote control, automatic tracking, and automatic collision avoidance, and puts forward constructive suggestions from the aspects. It provides a strong empirical basis for the improvement and revision of the "Guidelines", and lays a solid foundation for the establishment of a safety supervision system for the normal navigation of autonomous ships.