Towards MASS: A concept and a framework for operating only once of electromechanical devices on ocean-going merchant vessels

The rapid advancement of autonomous maneuvering technologies for ships stands in stark contrast to the sluggish progress in electromechanical devices operation. To address this gap and improve the intelligence of marine engine system, the concept of "operating only once" for electromechanical devices is proposed, and its implementation framework is presented. Whether performed onboard or from a remote shore center, operating marine engine room devices through individual sequential commands proves user-unfriendly. Such operation is mentally strenuous and inefficient. Moreover, when conducted from a shore center, it introduces safety hazards due to potential data transmission failures. The concept of operating only once consolidates a sequence of commands into a single friendly command, enabling marine engineers to focus on operational objectives rather than intricate procedural details. These underlying commands are generated based on graphs, path planning algorithms, and real-time measurement system. Considering the complexity of operational commands within the marine engine room, a layer graph approach is proposed and utilized. Each comprehensive graph is decomposed into multiple sub-layer graphs. The high, medium, and low commands are designed to enhance flexibility and efficiency. To validate our proposed concept, tasks of supplying power to emergency grid under normal condition and fault condition are tested. The performance of this automatic terminal is compared against three chief engineers and three trainees. Results show that in the case of normal condition, the automatic terminal completes the task in 48 s, whereas Chief engineers average 130 s and trainees average 402 s. In the case of 24V power failure, automatic terminal completes the task in 51 s, compared to average 145 s for chief engineers, and average 532 s for trainees. Feedback from both trainees and engineers confirms that the automatic terminal is highly user-friendly and intuitive. With further development of this concept and its real-world application onboard, autonomous ships will become an increasingly attainable reality.