Over the last decade, Rolls Royce has been investing in the digital transformation of the marine industry. To this end, they are in the midst of establishing an Intelligent Analytics Center in Norway and an R & D Center in Finland. It would appear that this is just the beginning of a number of new and innovative developments to come for the maritime transport industry. Rolls Royce has reported that they have already outfitted a ship with sensors and that intelligent systems are already in testing with operators. Rolls Royce has plans to put a fully autonomous fleet into commission by the year 2020. Over the longer term, the company aims to build a robot boat control center that can be manned by a team of somewhere between 7 to 14 people. The objective for the team is that they ultimately will be able to monitor and control an entire fleet of ships as they sail around the world.
From the handheld Black Hornets to the 40-meter wingspan of the Global Hawk and beyond, unmanned aircraft systems have already revolutionized warfare. At the same time, self-driving cars are bound to overhaul ground transportation. Look no further than Alphabet Inc.’s (i.e., Google’s) Waymo and the fresh, out-of-the-box robot taxi called Zoom.
With new developments in autonomous transportation happening at sea and on land, IoT is reshaping heavy industry. The growing network of IoT systems integrating Big Data and AI is changing not only the way we travel but also the way we ship goods. Heavy industry is on the cusp of a revolution. Let’s look at two breakthrough IoT solutions for the freight and mining industries to understand better how IoT is reshaping heavy industry for tomorrow’s world.
