SmartShipping

For regions with high economic power such as North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), a competitive and sustainable transport system is an indispensable location factor. In NRW, inland waterway transport plays a key role due to its system advantages of efficiency, safety and environmental compatibility. At the same time, inland waterway transport is facing major challenges: - The existing shortage of skilled workers will continue to worsen due to demographic change - The competing modes of transport, especially trucks, are rapidly advancing the development of automated driving and reducing (personnel) costs - The freight structure effect requires small, flexibly deployable ships which, however, cannot be operated profitably with the current crew size The SmartShipping research strategy attempts to meet these challenges with the help of automated driving. The crew is relieved of control tasks and can thus be reduced. At the same time, automated driving can help prevent accidents due to human error and increase the safety level. This can sustainably strengthen the competitiveness of inland navigation. On the way to an automated inland navigation vessel, several stages have to be climbed, which will be dealt with in the following projects: - VeLABi - Research and control center for autonomous inland vessels (Financing: Ministry of Transport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia) - FernBin - Remote-controlled, coordinated driving in inland navigation (Financing: Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy BMWi) - AutoBin - autonomous inland waterway vessel - simulation and demonstration of automated navigation in inland waterway transport (Financing: European Regional Development Fund EFRE) - HaFoLa - Research Center for innovative port and handling technologies (Funding: Ministry of Transport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia)