Neil Salter, chair of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology’s Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) Special Interest Group and Ross Macfarlane from MASSPeople reflect on unresolved questions surrounding accountability in incidents involving autonomous vessels.

“Under maritime law, at the moment, it’s the master of the vessel that has ultimate responsibility. There can be others responsible, say if a member of the crew hasn’t been doing their job and that led to an incident, [but] it always comes back to the master, as they are the accountable figure on location,” opens Macfarlane.

For semi-autonomous vessels with a captain on board, this system could stay in place, but where there is no captain, Macfarlane suggests looking towards the aviation industry.

“There is this role of an accountable manager. So, if an incident happens anywhere in the world, that person is responsible to the regulatory authorities.”

For vessels operating from a remote operations centre, Macfarlane says this role could lie with someone at the centre. However, it is feasible that there may not just be one single centre operating a vessel.

“There have been other possibilities proposed, such as a three-fold accreditation process: the flag state, the remote operations centre, and then the vessel itself, which would say that your operation centre could control A, B, C types of vessel in X, Y, and Z countries.

“Say you were sailing from country X to country Z, but the operations centre used in country Y is not certified in country Z; somewhere along the line, you will have to hand over responsibility to a different centre that has permission to control that type of vessel in country Z waters,” explains Macfarlane.

Another complex issue surrounds responsibility for the algorithms that lie behind the automation. Salter says it could be that: “Insurance companies would seek to recover the outlay from the writers of the algorithms.”

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Read the full article Accountability in an Autonomous Era at The Marine Professional.