The SPINE (Shipping and Port Interfaces In the New Era) project, which is being led by MSE International, held a very successful on-water demonstration of its prototype communications system which enables smart autonomous shipping to interface with land-side operations.

A significant milestone in the project, the demonstration event took place at the University of Plymouth's Marine Station, using the university's autonomous vessel, USV Bauza to demonstrate the use of VDES connectivity for uncrewed vessel operations within and outside of port limits.  Project partners Marico Marine Group and Frequentis had personel on hand to describe the technologies they had designed and explain the outcomes of the testing.

Marico Marine, Frequentis and the University of Plymouth will continue with more testing and demonstrations outside the port limits before finalising their report as the project comes to an end.

Other speakers at the event included Jake Rigby, Head of Innovation and Research at BMT and Chair of MarRI-UK's Technical Board who gave the Keynote Speach setting the scene for the importance of collaboration in innovation and the growing themes of clean maritime, autonomy and digitalisation and the challenges these present.

Project partner Houlder Ltd, presented their design for a 10,000 cbm methanol bunkering vessel which was their involvement in the SPINE project. More information about their design can be found here.

Ricardo, who led the work package on Port Energy Modelling, presented the key findings from their work which included interviews with a number of UK ports. Key takeaways from their work included the need for governments and investors to support innovation in decarbonisation, the need for a viable regulatory framework in the UK to accelerate the transition to decarbonisation, clarity over future fuels options and options for the scale up of electrification and other decarbonising solutions.

SPINE (Shipping and Port Interfaces In the New Era) is a project consisting of nine organisations, led by MSE International which has been part funded by the Smart Maritime Land Operations Call managed by MarRI-UK and supported by the Department for Transport. The project is aiming to advance the automation of operations in the land/water interface, supporting both infrastructure and operations in the port environment.