Indian Register of Shipping publishes guidelines for autonomous surface vessels and remotely operated vessels
Leading international ship classification society Indian Register of Shipping (IRClass), has published Guidelines on Remotely Operated Vessels and Autonomous Surface Vessels. The focus of the high-level Guidelines is on providing a broad framework/ philosophy for stakeholders involved in design, construction and testing of such vessels with varying levels of autonomy, according to IRClass's release.
These Guidelines cover design philosophy, risk assessment, system requirements including cyber resilience, network architecture, data & software assurance. A separate chapter focuses on requirements of Remote Control Centre which plays a critical role in monitoring and control of such vessels.
Autonomous controls are aimed at progressive levels of delegation of decision making and control execution functions normally carried out by the operator, to a computer system. Five levels of technological autonomy have been defined in the Guidelines.