Trials of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) will be key towards developing an appropriate regulatory regime that addresses the specific challenges of autonomous ships. Eight IMO Member States* have come together to form the MASSPorts, an initiative promoted by Singapore to address the challenges and achieve alignment of standards for the trials and operation of MASS in ports.

The IMO Secretariat joined the initiative’s virtual discussions at its first meeting (4 August 2020), where objectives including detailed guidelines, common terminology, ship reporting and data exchange, and facilitating port-to-port trials were set out (read more here).

Find out more about IMO’s work on autonomous ships, here.

*China, Denmark, Finland, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Republic of Korea, and Singapore