The MOSES project develops an autonomous ship manoeuvring and berthing system and a feeder that will improve the operational capacity of small ports.

The results of this project also include the design of freight feeder vessels with a sustainable propulsion system and prepared to operate in ports that do not have the infrastructure for loading and unloading goods.
Fundación Valenciaport has developed a prototype of a monitoring station that collects and displays, in real time, information on the geolocation of tugboats.

Valencia, March 27th, 2024. – The European project MOSES, ‘AutoMated Vessels and Supply Chain Optimisation for Sustainable Short Sea Shipping‘, an initiative that started in July 2022 with the aim of improving the modal split of short sea shipping in the container supply chain has recently ended with remarkable results.

This project, in which Fundación Valenciaport has actively participated, brought together seventeen partners from seven countries and more than €8,000,000 of budget, co-financed by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission.

According to Fundación Valenciaport, the improvement in the SSS (Short Sea Shipping) component of the container supply chain has been achieved through a series of innovations that include the design of freight feeder vessels with a sustainable propulsion system and prepared to operate in ports that do not have the infrastructure for loading and unloading goods. In addition, it has included the development of an autonomous vessel manoeuvring and berthing system that provides operational independence with respect to the availability of port nautical services (pilots, tugs and moorers).

In total, MOSES has had three demonstrators or pilots in Denmark and the Netherlands.

The first one involved an autonomous operation of a fleet of tugboats with automooring (automated mooring technology) and remote monitoring, carried out in the port of Faaborg (Denmark) in October 2023.

The second demonstrator consisted of an autonomous operation of a feeder designed for the use cases contemplated in the project for Short Sea Shipping routes; the Valencia-Sagunto-Gandia route and the Piraeus-Greek Isles-Mykonos route. The demonstration took place at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN) facilities in the Netherlands in September 2023.

The last of the demonstrations, of a robotic arm for autonomous cargo operation, took place at the facilities of the Dutch firm TNO in the Netherlands in September 2023.

In addition, participation in this project has allowed Fundación Valenciaport to investigate different possibilities and analyse the requirements for installing the electric battery recharging infrastructure on the docks to enable feeder vessels to transport goods between ports using propulsion systems based on batteries or hybridised with low-emission fuels.

Fundación Valenciaport has also developed a prototype of the Shore Tugboat Control Station (STCS), a monitoring station that collects real-time geolocation information from the tugboats and presents it on a graphical interface.

In summary, thanks to this project, an innovative, more sustainable and efficient feeder has been developed, which will help to optimise container loading and unloading processes. All this with its own resources, autonomously and independently of the availability of pilots or tugboats when entering a port, thus improving the operational capacity of the same; especially that of the smaller port enclaves.