This month the German-Dutch project 'Ferry Go!' officially started. The aim of this project is to develop an autonomous ferry service in the German-Dutch Wadden Sea. A consortium of nine project partners has been put together for 'Ferry Go!', including the ICD company YP Your Partner from Drachten. With 20 people, perhaps the smallest partner in this large Dutch-German consortium, but an important one because of their renowned telemetry knowledge. Telemetry allows signals to be transmitted wirelessly to the mainland. In this way, important data and images from all kinds of sensors can be transmitted remotely.

This is important, because self-steering systems are often monitored remotely from a 'control room'. True autonomous sailing is not yet possible, but the first steps in that direction have already been taken. For example, 'autonomous mooring' and 'driving lanes at sea' are elements that are already being worked on. In addition, no real ferries are being sailed yet, but the 'DLR (the renowned German aerospace institute) test ship'. This ship has all the technology on board to function as a larger (autonomous) ship and to conduct tests with it.

The big challenge is to sail more safely with autonomous ships than with manned ships. Two years ago we unfortunately experienced that on the Wadden Sea in the morning twilight. Something like that must be prevented in the future! And also in inland shipping, errors of judgment are made several times a year, with damaged bridges as a result. Enough raison d'être for this groundbreaking project!

Read here the article about Ferry Go! on the NOS websitee.