Driving force: Kongsberg’s An-Magritt Ryste interview

As a trained naval architect, which innovation do you think has transformed the industry the most?

From my perspective, the introduction of computer power into shipping has opened the door to many of the changes that we have seen in recent years. I started out in Kongsberg’s offshore business, which was the indirect result of the development of dynamic positioning.

Kongsberg played an important role in the development of the first dynamic positioning installed in a vessel, back in 1970. It was the result of collaboration between industry partners and a research institute, and was small by modern standards, but it was one of the major developments.

From those small beginnings, it has developed into the technology that has transformed the maritime industry. Today’s offshore industry and modern high-tech vessels are the result. And we shouldn’t forget that it needed a visionary ship owner who was willing to collaborate and to take a risk, with an eye on the potential upside.

You are keen to emphasise team work as a key ingredient in some of these research collaborations.

After beginning my career with Kongsberg in the offshore operations area, where I gained early exposure to automation solutions in the rig and drilling operations solutions part of the business, I moved on to project manage a research project within the PILOT-E innovation incubator programme. This gave me first hand insight to the benefits of bringing together the private sector and research institutions.

In the complex world we are seeing right now, almost nobody can do everything alone. You need to have partners, you need to work together, and you need to have the drive to lead and to take risks.

It is clear that these programmes need diverse skill sets – they are too complicated for one person or company to complete themselves.

How would you describe the process of working with engineers focused on developing innovative solutions to problems?

One of the temptations for engineers is to overcomplicate to reach the perfect solution. But, actually, working with smaller vessels, under strict budget constraints, can force engineers to scale back solutions. It is one of the coolest challenges to find simple solutions to complex problems. And, you know, sometimes when you do that, you can combine already existing solutions in a new way.

How do you see the impact of transformational changes, such as AI or digitalisation, affecting the industry?

I see that the industry is at a crossroads, in terms of technical approaches. Other solutions providers have a choice to make between partnering up and developing collaborations to gain expertise in areas such as AI. Or they can work towards an open source code-type approach so they can engage with the wider community. This has the capacity to achieve far greater drive and uptake than any company could achieve via their own investment. But this then raises different questions. Rather than developing a solution or algorithm or functionality, you would then need to focus on how you apply these solutions.

Some might characterise this ‘high-trust’ type of approach towards collaboration as typically Scandinavian. How has Kongsberg arrived at this approach?

We have assessed our position and identified where our strengths and weaknesses lie, and where are the partnerships that we want to target to go further. We also decided what sort of effort we wanted to put into that – there are very good research institutes, people and government-funded organisations investing in some areas. We cannot compete with that. But by partnering up, we can achieve far more together.

In your current role as the business owner of autonomy at Kongsberg, you also have a perspective on the transformational potential of autonomy on business models.

There are a number of different business models that we are looking at from different consumer markets. Younger generations are already familiar with service models from their electric cars, or phones. This might mean selling uptime, or sharing fuel performance, or even software modules.

Beyond different service models, it might also mean taking a more holistic view of efficiency to include logistics – what is the point of improving the efficiency of a container vessel if the vessel has to queue before unloading?

But at Kongsberg, we have seen that many of the first movers in autonomy are coming from outside the maritime industry. For example, Norwegian companies who are looking at automation as a potential solution to their logistics and sustainability challenges. Their willingness to challenge established ways of doing things might also lead to the development of new logistics models – the transformational effects of autonomy may not be limited to individual vessels’ systems.

What is your perspective on the current status of autonomy?

When I joined Kongsberg’s autonomy project, we were going to deliver autonomy in the sense of unmanned vessels within three years. And four years have passed and we’re not there yet. The things you don’t know are easy to underestimate, as they say.

Certainly, the technological complexity of developing autonomous solutions has proven to be greater than anticipated, but there have also been challenges around rules and regulations.

At the moment, we don’t expect autonomous vessels to enter operations in the short term. But an incremental approach is the way forward.

How has the evolving situation for rules and regulations affected the project?

Well, one of the factors has been the evolution in rules and regulations governing autonomy.

But more broadly, one of the problems is that there are not any commonly agreed rules. We are operating under Flag state rules in national waters, but Flag states have not been able to reach any agreements on rules so that trials can operate across international boundaries.

I can give you the example of an EU funded project, Autoship. The first tests are due to begin in summer 2022, and the vessel will cross between Norwegian and Danish waters. The Danish Maritime Authority has agreed that the vessel can operate under NMA rules while it is in Danish waters.

How is the evolving regulatory environment affecting the design of Kongsberg’s solutions?

We are trying to develop solutions that are future proof, not least because that is what is needed to attract ship owners’ support. Because the rules are constantly evolving, this means that we need to introduce plug-and-play solutions, rather than installing ‘monolithic’ solutions that are susceptible to evolving rules. You don’t want to have to reinstall everything if the rules change – you want to be able to just change out the one thing you want to replace.

To give you an example of an area where our thinking is evolving at the moment, we are currently discussing whether safety critical systems should be allocated to the control or guidance domain. In other words, do we want to give more control to the shore or more and more control to a smarter ship. We have live projects evaluating these issues right now.

How has Kongsberg’s thinking about autonomous and remotely operated engine rooms evolved during the project?

While the questions around autonomous navigation – and the replacement of the look-out, for example – occupied us at the beginning of the project, we soon realised that the engine room was also going to be unmanned, rather than periodically unmanned.

At the moment, we are at a stage where we can have trials of autonomous vessels close to shore or in inland waters, and our preference is for hybrid or fully-electric solutions.

However, for the full benefits of autonomous shipping to be realised in the deep-sea segment of the market, we will need engine manufacturers to demonstrate that their engines can operate without supervision for extended periods of time. I think we are all quite a long way away from that at the moment.

However, we are not necessarily seeking to develop unmanned autonomous vessels for the deep-sea sector at the moment. By increasing the proportion of engine room management performed by a remote operations centre, you could optimise the size and workload of the crew.

And finally, if you have to look forward, how do you expect the introduction of autonomous shipping to affect the industry?

As we are still at the initial trial stage, we have largely focused on port infrastructure, and replacing the more traditional and known systems of today. But subsequently we can expect automation to touch shipbuilding, vessel designs and even maritime services, like insurance, as well as business models. We haven’t seen anything yet.