Smart ships - autonomous or remote controlled?

Nowadays the time of the smart ship is at the door. This is the result of the new, Fourth Industrial Revolution that is fast approaching. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the result of an enormous increase in information being acquired, stored, processed, and transmitted. The effect of this has been smart domestic appliances, robots, telephones, production machines, and other objects, visible everywhere in everyday life. There are obviously many advantages to the introduction of smart vehicles and attempts to introduce smart cars into traffic are already in progress. Smart ships are also currently attracting much attention. RINA organized three international conferences on this subject in a short space of time. An attempt to send a fully autonomous experimental ship across the Atlantic is already in progress. Although technically it would be possible to already build smart ships, there are many practical problems to be solved before they could be put into operation. Apart from purely technical problems there are problems of the economy, safety, security, and environmental protection as well as legal and political problems. There are also important problems regarding employment, training, and human relations. Questions are now being asked as to whether smart ships would be fully autonomous, remote controlled, or manned with a skeleton crew, and who will ultimately be responsible for the ship in question and how smart ships will affect sea traffic. Some of these problems have been discussed in this paper.