Abstract
ABSTRACT Many maritime activities, such as loading, unloading and transporting cargoes, consist primarily of long periods of low-stress, with some moments of high stress during complex manoeuvres or unanticipated, dangerous, incidences. The increase in autonomy provided by machines and AI is beginning to take over certain tasks in the maritime sector, to reduce costs and mitigate human error. However, with the current levels of autonomous technology available, legislation, and public trust in the technology, such solutions are only able to remove majority of tasks associated with low-stress periods. In fact, many current remote control solutions still suggest relying on human operators to deal with the complex situations AI struggle with. Such a human–automation relationship could endanger the human element. The concern is that, if the human user is spending a disproportionate part of their time dealing with multiple, unconnected, high-stress tasks, without periods to de-stress, this could increasingly put workers at risk. This paper seeks to highlight potential technical, social, and mental, issues that may arise as the sector begins implementing semi-autonomous and fully autonomous maritime operations.
Highlights
In most occupational contexts, even with the rise of automated tools and services, it is well established that human error will always be relevant as long there is a social-technical element
This is true with the mar itime sector, as no matter how prevalent technology becomes, the human element will always be a part of the picture through training, legal, and ethics issues (Kim et al 2020)
With the limitations of technology and an inherit distrust in autonomous systems dealing with difficult situations, full autonomy is likely to never be reached at ports or at sea
Summary
Even with the rise of automated tools and services, it is well established that human error will always be relevant as long there is a social-technical element. Considering that while workers on site or on-board may have more traditional stressors, like long hours (Raby et al 2001), their situational awareness may be impaired, making critical decisions harder and more prone to error (Hancock et al 2007) This means that as the degree of automation increases, and the autonomous systems have more direct control, it becomes more important to build human trust in these systems. It seems current studies on introducing autonomy to air, land, and sea tend to focus on the transition of the existing workforce into remote control autonomy, with little to no focus on the impact of new/ minority demographics entering or growing into the workforce This is another research area worth exploring, if high, but not fully, autono mous vehicles become more common as the work force will have a decreasing amount of people with real-world experience, and an increase in workers with remote access or managing experience. This issue may be compounded if individuals are a part of multiple “remote crews”, as postulated earlier
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