Excellence deserves favour and while our new best friend Covid 19 the virus did manage to impair travel for some the conference itself was definitely left unscathed. The variety of high quality, inspirational papers did justice to HIPER’s name. As hoped, the house chef concocted true Italian, nonna-grade marvels which the sommelier honoured exactly and, new to HIPER, Panels where held at the end of each day on topics spanning from how to promote evolution in ship building to whether academia is a better suited research lab than industry.

HIPER 2020 went back to the basics of high performance and explored its roots as opposed to keeping with the discrete examples trend of past years. In essence, high performance starts with the smallest, simplest component of any process, without which the superior hull shape, engine, propeller or complex process will not come to be. The ability to identify, isolate and act upon the key components of a given problem are also key to high performance in our era of Big Data and Digital Twins. The Industry 4.0 paradigm provides the perfect environment to develop high performance by definition and, at
last, misleading hype is fading and pseudo-“solutions” are being exposed.

Keeping in theme, pragmatic and realistic looks at the future from today’s standpoint took centre stage around questions like what is environmental protection really, how can the professional and social worlds be protected from a pandemic and adjust with least disruption, how to manage large groups of people in lock down or in the presence of a suddenly explosive infection rate, how to even tell what’s going on, etc.

Considerations about Artificial Intelligence opened the three-days of work, with Bertram pointing out that from an engineering standpoint the “misnomer “Artificial Intelligence” is a set of tools that may do jobs better or handle tasks we could not handle at all in the past”, and that “AI is a set of tools that may do jobs better or handle tasks we could not handle at all in the past . . . in its broadest sense, AI is concerned with the investigation and simulation of human intelligence with the ambition to replicate the processes in machines”. Recent news suggest a possible contradiction between space craft bringing back asteroid samples after a 3 year voyage (how did it actually get to that little rock, and to land on it . . .) and the mechanical failures in several Vendée Globe racing machines designed and built for the worst punishment possible under sail. Both arguably experimental endeavours started with powerful computers and smart programming (written by humans) sorting through Big Data in otherwise impossible ways, but the results are not quite the same. Not last and not least, despite its computational power AI cannot predict the unpredictable, create, have ethics, develop desire, at least not yet. Perez then sharply noted that “. . . AI cannot be a solution in itself”. AI and people are one and while AI will increasingly be required for (human) success its application in the marine industry is slow (due to the human presence).

At the same time, how to deal with confinement and how what to do about how limited tools and perception are in protecting today’s digitally oriented world? Plowman discussed how gaming, virtual reality and social media concepts now apply to human interaction, not just technology, although these are not per-se the answer. Video calls have been become common, even the norm, only since March 2020 though they have been readily available for years. Looking from a fresh angle, Matsuo et al propose “developing a deductive vision of the future as an extension of current social and technological trends” and “focused on fundamental problems and ideal images”. This allows formulation of “a strategic hypothesis based on the attitude of the future image . . . to create”, implementing it and organizing “the technology to achieve it”. Pragmatically, Soncini points out that IMO tries to keep up, too, by establishing four degrees of ship autonomy in its strategic planning but economics hamper what should be a totally impartial and neutral process. Technology and industry progress faster than regulatory bodies and insurers are left behind. Will “progress” have to be slowed in order to ensure, regulate,
possibly enforce what is best for everyone ?

Back to the drawing board, two “inventions” stood out for their simplicity and effectiveness. Odetti et al designed, built and field-proved a portable Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) equipped with interchangeable sensors and a true engineering masterpiece in its radio-axial pump for operation in very shallow waters. The sensors are housed in plug & play receptables and connected to the radio transmitter by a micro-LAN. Claneros et al deal with water and air pollution from hydrocarbon spills by deploying highly oleophilic yet hydrophobic sponges that can absorb 30 times their mass in fluid (periodic squeezing required), flanked by oil-degrading, smell removing allogenic bacteria innocuous for people. Both are reusable. Still in the green-sea zone, discussion of alternative fuels from LNG to hydrogen foreseeably resulted in observing that with the exception of wind and solar all power sources involve some undesirable by-product.

More crucially Musio et al address contagious disease outbreaks at sea. Cruise ships, war ship and, very likely if unknown, submarine operations have been crippled by the Cod pandemic. Lazarettes have disappeared and ship crowding has soared forcing a deep rethink of sick-bays, requiring the ability to segregate whole areas of the ship, distributing air treatment circuits into closed loops accordingly, providing for food and hygiene services capable of supporting scores of people, etc. What a puzzle that is for designers, yards and operators when considering the already signed contracts for ships to be
delivered in coming years.

Taking a fresh look back multi-hulls were rediscovered and found to offer significant advantages especially in specialized applications. Another finding based on (not so) Big Data is that 20% of ship maintenance is unplanned, considerable given that maintenance represents 40% of ship operation costs. A fresh look ahead, Yang et al consider a Virtual-Real Interaction Testing for Functions of Intelligent Ships : how to leave “dependence on human intrinsic knowledge” aside in testing “autonomous” functions ? Their thought flow is very pertinent: “cognitive capabilities derived from perception, decision-making capabilities derived from cognition, optimization capabilities derived from decision-making, control capabilities derived from optimization, execution capabilities derived from control, and repair capabilities derived from fault”. Are humans are too subjective to design tests for AI-type machines (should we ask HAL 9000 ?).

Modular Conceptual Synthesis, effectively a Lego-type collection of “building block” DigitalTwins, was introduced by Lagemann et al., preface to discussing the falling misconception of the Digital Twin itself (DT). Finally accepted, DTs are ever-present, arguably the conjunctive tissue of modern engineering and technology. They are synthesized, operational, predictive and then some, essentially each person, process, machine, etc. has a bespoke DT, be it used or not. Looking at the world of design, construction and operation of marine vessels Danese indicated that Industry 4.0 principles provide the infrastructure needed by bespoke DTs to feed the data & information sharing that is required to compose and a truly collaborative, distributed process. Panel 1 discussions points to Industry 4.0 remaining unaccomplished in Big Industry, which Danese deems unlikely to change unless currently market standard monolithic / paralytic pseudo-solutions are not challenged more vigorously. For this there exist many common tools and processes already in place or available out-of-the-box and perfectly capable to generate and maintain bespoke DTs and directly and better supporting the still infant PLM paradigm.

Back to the water, antifouling DTs are not common, forcing empirical testing with relatively short-term conclusive evaluations . UV emitting LEDs embedded in a transparent layer might soon coat many hulls and possibly be painted on. Wireless energy transmission, neural meshing of the LEDs and 3D printing nanotechnology are options, too, and power could come from wind, sun and ship motions.

Last but not least, HIPER and Industry 4.0 find their bond in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) which connects hence encompasses and wraps everything up: position predicting, machine learning, testing of intelligent ships, etc. – all depend on both instant and Big Data, at once, something that is possible only via solid IIoT. Despite its usefulness, edge computing is not as commonly employed as it should be. In fact, IIoT itself is largely ignored due to lack of understanding and vision among those who wold most benefit from taking advantage of it. Vannas & Danese lamented the Big Industry closed IoT systems suffocating Industry 4.0. Vannas’ Library of Things paradigm was identified as one immediate remedy: “communications are established with the drivers and controllers of devices, not with devices themselves, rendering the solution ubiquitous and unlimitedly extensible. This allows multi-directional channels, supports hack-stopping segregated networks and provides a “remarkably low cost connectivity in multi-player system architecture thanks to a novel business model based on the supply of free “drivers” and communications channels through a network of gateways, rendering
customers autonomous and freeing them from dependence on the IIoT supplier.

HIPER 2020 was the light at the end of the tunnel: it showed that people are getting off bandwagons and pursuing pragmatic goals while maintaining a vision and that a number of our industry players have finally embraced or are moving towards Industry 4.0 : HIghPERformance !