Automated Ships?

[Kelpie]

We can dock space ships on auto.

We can dock spacecraft in an environment with zero external forces (wind, tide etc) using equipment that must be designed for one specific type of craft.

DP certainly seems like the key to manoeuvring alongside, but the rope handling itself still seems hard to resolve. You could have a custom dock- analogous to the spacecraft situation- but that reduces flexibility and increases costs. And of course DP is not cheap, and adding it to a vessel that does not otherwise need it is a non trivial cost.

 

[JumbleDuck]

We can dock spacecraft in an environment with zero external forces (wind, tide etc) using equipment that must be designed for one specific type of craft.

DP certainly seems like the key to manoeuvring alongside, but the rope handling itself still seems hard to resolve. You could have a custom dock- analogous to the spacecraft situation- but that reduces flexibility and increases costs. And of course DP is not cheap, and adding it to a vessel that does not otherwise need it is a non trivial cost.

Ferries on the Alster in Hamburg used to dock using stuffing great electromagnets grabbing on to steel plates on the piers. Maybe that system to could be used - or reversed - for big commercial ships.