Monday, 27 March 2017

Image Caption: Rolls-Royce and Tampere University of Technology, to develop and test the technology to support autonomous navigation.

Rolls-Royce and Tampere University of Technology, Finland, have announced a strategic partnership to develop and test the technology to support systems necessary for autonomous navigation, enabling the first generation of autonomous ships.

The partners will work towards developing and validating technologies using the University's purpose built autonomous ship simulator.

Tampere University of Technology has extensive research expertise in intelligent machines and networked systems. The University's research into autonomous systems looks at how huge quantities of data can be analysed, processed, and transferred, signal processing and human machine interaction. The University already has extensive experience of researching autonomous control systems in other industries most notably the mining and automotive sectors.

Karno Tenovuo, Rolls-Royce, Senior Vice President Ship Intelligence, said: 'Rolls-Royce is pioneering remotely controlled and autonomous ships and believes such a remote controlled ship will be in commercial use by the end of the decade. Tampere University of Technology is an innovative and experienced partner who can help us develop autonomous systems that will redefine shipping.'

Dr Kuosmanen, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Tampere University of Technology, said: 'We have been working with Rolls-Royce, in the AAWA Project, on the development of remote controlled and autonomous ships since 2015. This collaboration moves us a step closer to making our vision of an autonomous vessel in operation a reality in the near future.'

About Rolls-Royce and autonomous shipping

  1. Rolls-Royce is pioneering the development of remote controlled and autonomous ships, applying technology, skills and experience from across its businesses with the ambition of seeing a remote controlled ship in commercial use by the end of the decade. Rolls-Royce's experience in secure data analytics across civil aerospace, defence, nuclear power and marine; coupled with its ship intelligence capabilities, design, propulsion and machinery expertise means it is ideally placed to take the lead in defining the future of shipping, in collaboration with industry, academia and Government.
  2. The Marine division of Rolls-Royce already has strategic partnerships with the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Tampere University of Technology (TUT), Norwegian University of Technology and Science (NTNU), and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, together with numerous collaboration projects with SMEs and start-ups specialising in novel technologies.

About Rolls-Royce Holdings plc

  1. Rolls-Royce's vision is to be the market-leader in high performance power systems where our engineering expertise, global reach and deep industry knowledge deliver outstanding customer relationships and solutions. We operate across five businesses: Civil Aerospace, Defence Aerospace, Marine, Nuclear and Power Systems.
  2. Rolls-Royce has customers in more than 150 countries, comprising more than 400 airlines and leasing customers, 160 armed forces, 4,000 marine customers including 70 navies, and more than 5,000 power and nuclear customers.
  3. We have three common themes across all our businesses:
    • Investing in and developing engineering excellence
    • Driving a manufacturing and supply chain transformation which will embed operational excellence in lean, lower-cost facilities and processes
    • Leveraging our installed base, product knowledge and engineering capabilities to provide customers with outstanding service through which we can capture aftermarket value long into the future.
  4. Annual underlying revenue was £13.8 billion in 2016, around half of which came from the provision of aftermarket services. The firm and announced order book stood at £80 billion at the end of 2016.
  5. In 2016, Rolls-Royce invested £1.3 billion on research and development. We also support a global network of 31 University Technology Centres, which position Rolls-Royce engineers at the forefront of scientific research.
  6. Rolls-Royce employs 50,000 people in more than 46 countries. More than 16,000 of these are engineers.
  7. The Group has a strong commitment to apprentice and graduate recruitment and to further developing employee skills. In 2015 we employed 228 graduates and 277 apprentices through our worldwide training programmes.

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Rolls-Royce Holdings plc published this content on 27 March 2017 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein.
Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 27 March 2017 10:14:10 UTC.

Original documenthttp://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press-releases/yr-2017/27-03-2017-rr-and-tampere-university-of-technology.aspx

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