Autonomous shipping in the emerging scenario of logistics and transportation

The concept of automation has been a major discussion point in the maritime industry over the last years. However, the maritime industry, by always being well known for its efficiency in the global trade, has been prudent in the topic of adaptation of new technologies because of possible disruptions in the transportation operations. At the same time, the fact of functioning in the age of the 4.0 industrial revolution required the industry to consider the advantages that new technology can provide. Impacted by industry 4.0, maritime 4.0 provided a variety of opportunities for the industry to build innovative solutions from real-time insights to remote operations to automated process optimization. While until a few years ago, autonomous vehicles were mainly used by the marine scientific research organizations and the defence industry for a wide variety of naval operations, nowadays, maritime operating entities that want to be a part of automation take advantage of current technologies to establish their own R&D and implement huge capacity autonomous cargo vessels. The study aims at analysing opportunities and threats that autonomous vessels bring and could bring to operating processes of global maritime businesses and the shipping industry, examining the digital transformation experienced on ships, investigating if autonomous vessels will be the solution to sea transportation under the light of their advantages and figuring out whether autonomous vessels are already falling under the same type of legal framework as traditional vessels. Moreover, by analysing the contributions and challenges to businesses and management activities coming with autonomous vessels, to support the thesis, a further contribution to the identification of vessel automation will be given with witnesses and interviews of several maritime companies experiencing automation.