MURMANSK, April 7. /TASS/. The use of various unmanned systems will improve safety of projects in the Arctic and of the Northern Sea Route, Doctor of Economics, leading the Expert Council on Arctic Development at the St. Petersburg Committee on Foreign Relations Alexey Fadeev told TASS.
A few days earlier, the Russian government established an experimental legal regime for testing of unmanned aircraft systems in waters of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and in adjacent territories of the Russian Federation's Arctic Zone. The plan is to use deck-based drones for ice reconnaissance.
"Logistics is the very link that affects industrial and environmental safety. Excluding humans from this process will improve significantly the safety of projects in the Arctic. The exploitation of unmanned aircraft, which will be used for ice exploration, but further on which will be used also for cargo delivery, is a direct route towards improving industrial and environmental safety," the expert said.
The unmanned logistics will cut the cost of projects in the Arctic and the Far East and will accelerate their implementation by 24%. According to him, by 2030, fully unmanned vessels will make up to 10-15% of the fleet, and 90% of ships will be equipped with artificial intelligence (AI)assistants.
"The Arctic is an excellent testing ground for scaling technologies, AI, and digitalization solutions. Not only the sea, but the sky already begins to be digitized. Now that we are fighting for our technology sovereignty and for defending our rights to the Northern Sea Route, the ice situation information is critically important from the point of view of both exporting Russian hydrocarbons and organizing transit along the Northern Sea Route," he added.
The Arctic has ready institutional conditions and preferential regimes that favor the development of unique experiments and solutions in high latitudes. "This once again confirms that the policy of creating conditions for doing business in the Arctic and applying high technologies is the right policy, because there are no such solutions anywhere else but in the Arctic," the expert said in conclusion.