Unmanned autonomous vessels and the necessity of human-centred design

Abstract

Unmanned autonomous vessels are said to be the future of the shipping industry. Besides lowering cost and emissions, it is also said to lower the accidents attributed to human error completely. Still, the first unmanned autonomous vessel, YARA Birkeland, will have a Shore Control Center with operators monitoring the ship. This paper looks at how we can use human-centered design to design for the operators' situation awareness and reduce the risk of new complex human errors.