A study on Korean seafarer’s perceptions towards unmanned ship

Abstract

Recently, renewed attention for technological applications within the maritime industry has taken place, particularly regarding unmanned vessels. There has been a lot of interest about the number of projects aiming at testing the operational feasibility of unmanned vessels, particularly in relation to technological, safety and security issues. Nevertheless, no studies have investigated this issue from the point of view of seafarers towards unmanned vessels; this paper aims at filling this gap. Data has been collected through a survey questionnaire. A Pearson correlational coefficient has been used to test the correlation between some of the variables. The results show that more than half of the respondents indicated that unmanned vessels do not contribute to an increase in accidents at sea. In addition, seafarers believe unmanned vessels will not be operational in the near future, with most of the respondents indicating a 10-20 year time frame. Thirdly, most of the respondents(both officers and ratings.