AVATAR - Smart Shipping Event 2022 (2)

14 December 2022 - Published by Tom Pauwels

More than 250 inland navigation professionals visited the Smart Shipping Event 2022, whereby AVATAR Interreg North Sea Region co-sponsored the event. 👍

More than 250 inland navigation professionals visited the Smart Shipping Event 2022, whereby AVATAR Interreg North Sea Region co-sponsored the event. 👍

Project partners Rudy Negenborn, Louis-Robert Cool, Peter Geirnaert and Tom Pauwels represented the AVATAR-project.

Smart shipping in inland navigation is the future. This not only refers to the use of a trackpilot (cruise control for vessels), smart boxes (collection of data) or locks. Smart shipping also relates to highly autonomous sailing, whereby AVATAR puts the extra focus on city freight distribution.

Some of the main conclusions of the conference are:
💡 Smart shipping should not be a goal, but should be a means to reach objectives (e.g. higher use of inland navigation, green deal).
💡 There is no “one size fits all” solution. Introducing highly autonomous sailing on a big waterway is fundamentally different to a waterway in a city environment (other infrastructure characteristics and different types of obstacles).
💡 Inland navigation sector is confronted with a lack of sailing personnel. Smart shipping can be part of the solution for this, but attention is still needed for extra inflow of personnel (qualitative education). People are still needed for specific (technical) tasks on a vessel.
💡 Smart shipping will also help in sailing more efficient, but further alignment is needed with all partners in the logistics chain. One should not only focus on the development of a single vessel, but focus should also be on interaction with other vessels and alignment with (un)loading infrastructure.
💡 Introducing smart shipping also means creating a sense of security for the users.
💡 Challenges still exist with respect to legislation and insurance.
💡 For shippers of goods, it doesn’t matter how goods are moved. The type of transport should be done at a reasonable price, should be reliable, safe and green.
💡 Smart shipping can lead to a higher sustainable inland navigation sector, higher security and an increase of the competitive position of the inland navigation sector.

Rudy Negenborn (TU Delft | Mechanical Engineering) and Louis-Robert Cool (SEAFAR) elaborated on the relation between Smart Shipping and Smart Logistics; also taking into account the lessons learned from the AVATAR project on (highly) autonomous sailing and city freight distribution.

Tom Pauwels and Peter Geirnaert had fruitful discussions with conference participants about the AVATAR-project.

See also the AVATAR Linkedin message here.

Information about the Smart Shipping 2022 is also available here and here.

Impressions of the Smart Shipping Event 2022 (1/12/2022):

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