Lloyd’s Register awards Approval in Principle to Samsung’s Autonomous Navigation System.

Lloyd’s Register has now issued an Approval in Principle (AiP) to Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) for its Samsung Autonomous Ship (SAS) Autonomous Navigation System, as well as its SVESSEL® Communication System. This follows a Joint Development Project signed in 2023. The SAS Autonomous Navigation System features an Integrated Bridge System that includes situational awareness tools and SHI’s Anti-Collision Decision-Making System, which are integrated with existing navigation equipment to eradicate human error. Meanwhile, the SVESSEL® system enables the monitoring, calculation, evaluation, and analysis of a ship’s energy usage status while assisting with the optimal trim and route/speed configuration.

SAS software can be easily installed on a ship’s system near other software, enabling it to evaluate collision risks around the vessel and control the ship’s direction and speed to avoid potential dangers. To ensure that it complies with the latest LR rules and regulations for autonomous and remote accessibility ships, SHI provided LR with the idea and specific design for SAS and SVESSEL® that underwent thorough technical drawing reviews and documentation during the AiP process.

According to Young-Doo Kim, North East Asia TSO Manager at Lloyd’s Register, the AiP “is another landmark moment in LR and SHI’s joint development project for autonomous ship ready design.” He noted that the Autonomous Navigation System and SVESSEL communication system “offers a wide variety of integrated digital solutions to mitigate human error at sea, a fundamental requirement if we are to reduce the number of maritime accidents and make our industry safer.” Hyun Joe Kim, Vice President and Head of Autonomous Ship Research Center, Samsung Heavy Industries, called the AiP for SAS and SVESSEL “another proof of very good collaborations between SHI and LR during the certification process as we have done before,” and further added that SHI “continues the development of technologies on digitalization and automatic navigation to provide the most innovative ships to our customers.”

The AiP comes after the certification of SHI’s digitized electronic logbook system SVESSEL® eLogbook and Statement of Fact for SHI’s SVESSEL® CII Solution, both part of the JDP between SHI and LR, which were announced when the project to create autonomous ready ship design to support maritime digitization was unveiled along with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in Posidonia 2022.

Source .