Abstract
As autonomous technology advances in maritime transportation, the humans involved in making operations work remain crucial to ensuring the safety of the overall system. As part of this human–automation interaction, appropriate trust in technology is critical to avoid disuse, overreliance, or misuse. However, there is little knowledge on how seafarers perceive and respond to highly advanced automated and autonomous systems. Seafarers are tradition-bound and proud, and they maintain strong communities of practice. With this foundation, one can argue that interacting with new, radical technologies that change work practices, roles, and competencies might be challenging.
Taking a socio-technical perspective as a starting point, the main objective of this PhD thesis is to contribute to the understanding of the safety implications of increased automation and autonomy in maritime transport, by exploring maritime bridge officers’ trust in automated and autonomous technology.
The thesis’s research works contribute to: i) understanding the role of seafarers in highly automated and autonomous contexts, ii) how we may understand the level of, the development of, and the aspects of the trust that they exhibit toward such systems, and iii) the identification of pertinent factors and issues for safe autonomous systems. These objectives are fulfilled by the investigation of four research questions (RQ):
RQ1: How does increased automation influence seafarers’ professional practice?
RQ2: What characterizes seafarers’ trust in automated systems?
RQ3: How does seafarers’ professional commitment relate to trust in autonomy?
RQ4: What factors is it important to manage for the safe introduction of automation and autonomy according to bridge officers?
Methodologically, the thesis is a mixed-methods study comprising two interrelated studies of maritime seafarers, with a primary focus on bridge officers. The first study involves observations and interviews concerning highly automated car ferries in Norway. It was analyzed in two abductive qualitative analyses, resulting in two scientific publications. The second study was a survey analysis of 2,016 bridge officers employed on Norwegian ships, exploring their perceptions about (future) automated and autonomous systems. This analysis was also twofold: the first was a regression approach to analyze the relationship between professional commitment and trust in autonomy, and the second, using a subsample of 1,009 respondents, was a structural topic model of free-text responses on the identification of safety-related factors for autonomous systems.
The findings show that when faced with new highly automated navigational systems, bridge officers seem to mold both technology and practice through their communities of practice, enabled by seamanship, practical knowledge, and improvisational abilities (RQ1). They generally trust the existing automation on board and see the technology as an extended toolset. The development of this trust is contingent upon experiencing a system performance that aligns with aspects that are inherent in their professional identity, such as sailing in accordance with “good seamanship” (RQ2). A user-centered focus in development could enable this alignment. However, highly professionally committed bridge officers, in particular, mistrust the safety of future autonomous vessels (RQ3). In this regard, seafarers worry about safety issues (RQ4) pertaining to man (e.g., fear of loss of competence), technology (e.g., redundancy and reliability), and organization (e.g., how to organize key tasks such as emergency handling).
In the thesis, I also argue that seafarers’ mistrust of autonomous vessels can stem from an implicit worry of marginalization of seamanship and professional autonomy in their occupation. This raises a central question for the design and operation of autonomous transport systems: how to balance professional discretion and operational adaptation with agency- and rule-based machine control. I also discuss whether the technological drive of autonomous system development and implementation represents a socio-technical way of thinking or an awakening of a technological imperative. The thesis indicates a need for human-centered development and implementation processes to enable the technology’s positive safety effects, and provides several practical implications for industry stakeholders.