Russia to design unmanned icebreaker and unmanned cargo carrier for Arctic waters
Russian companies are working on creation of unmanned ships, IAA PortNews correspondent reported from the Marinet Conference organized in partnership with Media Group PortNews supported by RVC and held in Hamburg as part of SMM-2018. When speaking at the Conference, ECS General Director Aleksey Donskoy told about the successful project of AME on creation of an unmanned boat and about the conversion of the developed technologies for civil ships. Together with AME, ECS is going to launch pilot projects on testing autonomous navigation and remote control systems this year and continue them in 2019. Icebreaker is among the types of ships considered as the test platform.
According to Aleksey Dobrodeyev, representative of Krylov State Research Center, KSRS is performing studies related to creation of unmanned ships able to carry cargo along the Northern Sea Route in ice channel behind an icebreaker. He emphasized that the idea was driven by construction of powerful icebreakers able to break through Arctic ice at commercial speed to ensure assistance to convoys of cargo ships.
“Having powerful icebreakers we can start developing a concept of unmanned cargo carriers able to follow an icebreaker along the ice channel”, said Aleksey Dobrodeyev. According to him, an additional advantage of unmanned ships is that these technologies can be used for transportation of hazardous cargoes, in particular radioactive materials, with a reduced level of biological protection, which ensures final cost reduction.
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