Three NYK Group companies — NYK, Japan Marine Science Inc., and MTI Co., Ltd. — will participate in the Joint Technological Development Program for the Demonstration of Fully Autonomous Ships under the MEGURI 2040 Fully Autonomous Ship Project* (hereinafter MEGURI2040) administrated by the Nippon Foundation. All three companies are members of the Designing the Future of Fully Autonomous Ships Plus consortium (hereinafter DFFAS+),** which comprises 51 companies based in Japan. This news was announced on July 20 by the Nippon Foundation at a MEGURI2040 seminar*** that provided an overview of the second stage of MEGURI2040 and the project’s initiatives.

This program is positioned as the second stage of MEGURI2040, which started in 2020 and aims for full-scale commercialization of fully autonomous ship technology by 2025, which was developed in the “Joint Technological Development Program for Demonstration of Fully Autonomous Ship” (first stage) in cooperation with the Nippon Foundation.

First Officer Haruka Nishimura of NYK and Third Officer Tatsunori Kaneko of Kinyu Ship Management Co., Ltd. (currently on secondment to Japan Marine Science Inc.) participated in the panel discussion in the first part of the seminar. Satoru Kuwahara, executive officer at Japan Marine Science Inc., spoke about the second stage in the second part of the seminar.
Source: Nippon Yusen Kaisha