Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "European training and research network on Autonomous Barges for Smart Inland Shipping" "Peter Slaets" "Robotics, Automation and Mechatronics (RAM), Waves: Core Research and Engineering (WaveCore)" "According to the European Commission, passenger transport is projected to increase 42% by 2050, and freight transport up to 60%. Needless to say, this puts an enormous burden on transport networks and our environment. Compared to other modes of transport – which often face congestion and capacity problems – inland waterway transport is characterised by reliability, energy efficiency and a capacity for increased use. More than 37,000 km of waterways connect hundreds of cities and industrial regions in Europe. In the EU, 13 countries share an interconnected waterway network, highlighting the potential for increasing the modal share of inland waterway transport. This will not happen unless we can make inland waterways economically competitive. However, with crew costs accounting for 60% of the total cost, autonomous inland vessels represent an exciting disruptive technology.AUTOBarge is about seizing an opportunity. Europe’s waterways are a vital resource that we have underused for most of the last century. Now, with the possibility for mass autonomous shipping, these canals and rivers offer a network that we can exploit without damaging the environment to the extent of new roads and aircraft runways. But to be able to do this we need new people with new skills. These innovators must be experts in remote control, monitoring, smart logistics, regulatory aspects, and many more areas associated with the complexity of inland shipping. The 15 early-stage researchers recruited to AUTObarge will begin this transport revolution." "European Training and research network on Autonomous Barges for Smart Inland Shipping (AUTOBarge)." "Wouter Verheyen" "Transport and Regional Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Chalmers University of Technology, Nord University, Delft University of Technology, University of Hamburg, Business and Law" "Europe's waterways are a vital resource that we have underused for most of the last century. Now, with the possibility for mass autonomous shipping, these canals and rivers offer a network of opportunities for sustainable logistics. A number of operational and technological research projects aiming at setting up such system are currently taking place. Apart from operational and technologic innovations being required for such market introduction, also important legal innovations stand in the way of a succesful commercial market introduction. These legal challenges exist both at the level of Regulation as at the level of contract law. The project aims to eliminate obstacles in both fields. A large number of provisions in existing regulation oppose against unmanned inland navigation. The problem underlying this, is that a legal framework acknowledging unmanned shipping, going beyond (ad hoc) experiment legislation is absent. This task will analyse regulatory obstacles standing in the way of unmanned shipping and will evaluate the policy arguments behind such obstacles. Based on this, the task will provide a toolbox allowing developers to conduct a compliance check of their designs. Further, it will analyse how such policy arguments were overcome in other industries, such as the airline industry. Based on this input this task aims to make a proposal for a regulatory innovation allowing for a market-introduction of unmanned inland shipping. Also a dedicated contract law framework, taking into account the changed actors, information availability and risks resulting from the evolution to autonomous inland shipping is absent. This absence leads to legal uncertainty, can endanger the insurability of risks and increase transaction costs. With this, the private law framework can constitute an important obstacle towards the commercial use of autonomous inland shipping. This is even more relevant taking into account the mandatory nature of transport law, thus limiting the room for contractual risk management. This task will first of all analyse bottlenecks in the contract law framework, standing in the way of legal certainty, predictability and a fair balance of interests for stakeholders involved in the operation of autonomous inland shipping. Based on this analysis and building on best practises from other fields of law and sector consultation, the task aims to make a proposal for contract drafting and an amended legal framework, ascertaining these interests." "INLANAV - Innovative Inland Navigation." "Eddy Van de Voorde" "Transport and Regional Economics" "Three private partners (University of Antwerp, Schipco BV and Research Small Barges BV) are participating in the INLANAV-platform with a view of developing new vessel designs and facilitating market take-up. The concepts range from push barges powered by electric engines to the realization of an automatically guided barge with a greater hold; using new technologies and materials like for example composites.The University of Antwerp is examining a two stage tug and barge concept. In the first stage, the tug and barge concept sails on large waterways with several barges pushed by a single tug from seaports to the small inland waterways. In the second stage, at the entrance of a small inland waterway, the convoy is uncoupled and the small barges continue autonomously. The main focus of the concept is to combine economies of scale on large rivers (i.e. tugs and barges together) while the individual barges are small and economically feasible to sail on small waterways. This way the convoy can compete with its main competitor: road transport."