Norwegian companies to develop fully autonomous ship

Norwegian agriculture firm, Yara International and guidance systems builder, Kongsberg Gruppen are to develop the Yara Birkeland, an autonomous and fully-electric container ship. They claim the new vessel will reduce NOx and CO2 emissions and improve road safety by removing up to 40,000 truck journeys in populated urban areas. Yara Birkeland will initially operate as a manned vessel, moving to remote operation in 2019 and expected to be capable of performing fully autonomous operations from 2020. Kongsberg
July 25, 2017 Read time: 1 min
Norwegian agriculture firm, Yara International and guidance systems builder, Kongsberg Gruppen are to develop the Yara Birkeland, an autonomous and fully-electric container ship.


They claim the new vessel will reduce NOx and CO2 emissions and improve road safety by removing up to 40,000 truck journeys in populated urban areas.

Yara Birkeland will initially operate as a manned vessel, moving to remote operation in 2019 and expected to be capable of performing fully autonomous operations from 2020.

Kongsberg is responsible for development and delivery of all key enabling technologies on vessel, including the sensors and integration required for remote and autonomous operations, as well as the electric drive, battery and propulsion control systems.

Operation is planned to start in the latter half of 2018, shipping products from Yara's Porsgrunn production plant to Brevik and Larvik in Norway.

Location Based Systems

Related Content

  • Caltrans takes the long view of transport
    October 21, 2016
    Caltrans’ Malcolm Dougherty took time out of his schedule at ITS America 2016 in San Jose to talk to ITS International about current and future challenges. As director of California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) since mid-2012, many would say that Malcolm Dougherty has one of the best jobs in transportation. Caltrans is one of the most progressive and innovative transport authorities, implementing policies to encourage cycling, piloting new
    Read More
  • Siemens to deliver charging solutions to electric buses to Denmark
    April 11, 2018
    Siemens has entered a three-year agreement with Denmark’s public transport authority Movia to deliver charging stations with a top-down pantograph for electric buses to help slash particle and noise pollution and CO2 emissions. The transaction could potentially benefit 45 municipalities including the city of Copenhagen and Region Zealand. Last year, these towns and two regions of Zealand made a commitment to achieve C02-neutral bus transport by 2030 as part of Movia’s Mobility Plan 2016. In addition, t
    Read More
  • Colas to trial and develop autonomous IPV
    April 20, 2016
    UK company Colas will begin building and trialling the first autonomous impact protection vehicle (IPV) in the UK this year in partnership with two US companies, Royal Truck and Equipment and Micro Systems. Fitted with an electro-mechanical system and fully integrated sensor suite, the autonomous IPV has a leader/follower capability that allows it to follow a lead vehicle, unmanned. GPS position data is transmitted from the leader vehicle to the follower vehicle, which uses the data to follow the exact p
    Read More
  • Bespoke ITS is helping to reduced collisions on America’s rural roads
    October 22, 2014
    David Crawford cherrypicks conference and award highlights Almost 30% of all US citizens live in rural areas or very small communities, and 34 of the 50 states exceed this level in their own populations, with the proportions rising as high as 85%. And although rural routes carry only 35% of all traffic, the accidents that occur on them account for some 54% of all US road traffic accident deaths.
    Read More

Highlighted Content