Volvo Penta Docking System

PR came across my desk yesterday and I was considering it for a YF news piece. Volvo has always been an innovative manufacturer in the marine industry and they deserve the coverage. It appears Volvo is using dock mounted sensors which means the system is designed for a home berth; the last place most operators will need it. Building on their GPS positioning system, this is certainly an interesting, emerging technology but I think the system will need an infrastructure for it to become more widely adapted.

Here's a pic of the dock sensor...

I guess self driving boats are next on the horizon..

It's an accident waiting to happen.

The problem is the sheer dollar amount of damage that can be done. There are several marina's here in Fort Lauderdale with $1 billion in yachts in them. If it goes haywire and starts playing bumper boats around the marina it could cost huge money.

Yes, if you ever have got a mooring line in one prop you know how fun the ride can be...

This new system from Volvo is going to take a lot of work and investment if anyone wants to use it once it is released. The fact that you need the sensors on the docks will seriously reduce any adoption of it. I guess if people can't dock in their own slip due to some sort of disability, then it might make sense. But for most of us, the real issue in docking is at other marinas not our home port.

When they figure out how to protect the senors on the boat so that they operate like the sensors in new cars, it might certainly make docking easier. While I never have used the self parking option on our cars, I do appreciate both the camera system and the sensors that tell me when I am getting close to something while parking. The same would be valuable in docking particularly when a marina decides to place us in a slip which is really too tight.

Technology evolves. Sometimes we're pulled screaming all the way. Today we have systems superior to 5 and 10 years ago, and in the future it will go further. Today it is possible to program to repeat a route precisely. That doesn't make a docking mechanism seem so far fetched to me. As to the Sea Ray accident, it clearly wasn't the future gizmo and I doubt it was even today's joystick technology. Most Sea Rays do not have pods and for those that do, I see far more likelihood of operator error than equipment failure, partly because operator should be prepared for equipment failure. A boat getting stuck in gear isn't all that unusual. It happens. Now, it happens about 20% as often as it's alleged.

We have autos today with incredible safety features for backing for cars in blind spots and for lane changes. We have boats that have cameras used to highlight the field around the boat and create safe maneuvering. I never thought we'd see self driving cars and yet we're seeing them and very close to them being practical. I'm not going to predict what won't happen in the future because I would have long ago been wrong on what has already happened.