Autonomous and remotely-operated ships

AROS, Autonomous and Remotely Operated Ships is DNV’s newly developed family of Additional Class notations. Focused on functional requirements, the objective of AROS Notations is to assure the safe operation of autoremote vessels. Supported by DNV’s guidelines for autonomous shipping DNV-CG-0264 the goal of AROS Notations is to provide a framework for how autoremote vessels can achieve equivalent or higher safety compared to conventional vessels.

AROS Notations cover four categories of functions for autoremote ships – navigation, engineering, operational, and safety – and are distinguished by modes of operation (remote control, decision support, supervised autonomy, full autonomy) and location of ship control (onboard, off-ship, or hybrid).

AROS Class Notations

AROS Functions

AROS Modes of Operation

AROS Location of Control

This is still early days for autonomous and remotely operated ships. DNV expects that advances in research, technology, and legislation, as well as experience from projects, will lead to significant developments in autonomous shipping technology in the future. DNV’s guidelines and AROS class notations were designed to remain in step with these developments and will mature as autonomous technologies evolve.

The building blocks approach of the class notation allows vessels to have different modes of operation for separate functions and, if desired, more than one mode of operation per function. For example, an autoremote vessel with the Notation AROS-NAV(DS,SA,HC) and AROS-ENG(RC,HC) is enabled for Navigational Decision Support in parts of the Voyage and Supervised Autonomy in other parts, as well as Remote Control of machinery. In addition, the Hybrid control allows the vessel to be operated locally by the onboard crew, as well as remote operators elsewhere.

DNV Autonomous and remotely operated ships class guideline

The safety regulations set forth by the IMO for commercial shipping lack provisions for the technologies and operational concepts required to operate autonomous or remotely controlled vessels. National or regional regulatory bodies are, however, free to support the introduction of novel technologies and operational concepts within their territorial waters, for more details see Regulation.

In response to this gap, DNV published the first guideline on autonomous and remotely operated ships (also called autoremote ships) in 2018. Since then, the autonomy team has participated in many projects and partnerships with companies developing autoremote vessels’ concepts and systems, implementing the CG-0264 processes in the maritime industry successfully. 

Based on these projects, we updated DNV-CG-0264 to account for the changes that happened in the industry since 2018, as well as implement the lessons learned from the projects and partnerships. The updated CG-0264 is the baseline for the AROS family of Class Notations and  it also provides more guidance for system manufacturers and vessel owners seeking Type Approvals, Product Certification or Validation of autoremote vessel concepts/ systems. See Autremote Systems and Autremote Vessels for more details about the approval processes.

DNV-CG-0264 provides guidance on the design and arrangements for autoremote concepts and systems. The guideline focuses on the following main areas:

• Main principles for equivalent autoremote vessels
• Nagivation functions
• Engineering functions
• Safety functions
• Operations functions
• Modes of Operations
• Locations of Control
• Remote operation centres
• Connectivity