It is Tuesday, 28th May 2030, north of the Canary Islands. After a relaxing night, the first officer enters the idle bridge. A translucent projection on the windows highlights a swarm of unmanned trawlers fishing four nautical miles on port side, while their unmanned sister ship is still following them with two miles distance. Furthermore, a computer voice informs him about two ship encounters that took place during the night, while those are replayed on a tablet next to the captain’s seat. The officer checks the vessel’s position and route, which has slightly shifted to South.

A short videochat with the shore officer in Flensburg, who supervised the vessel during the night, and he has been informed that due to the latest weather forecast the course has been adjusted to avoid an upcoming low pressure system and that the weekly security update for the ECDIS is overdue. Furthermore, he got briefed that the shore office has cross-analyzed fuel injection sensor with the voyage data and detected a decreasing performance. The analyses expects a degrading hull performance, hence a cleaning has been ordered in the next port.

Shortly after this hand-over, he cross checks the event log of the lookout system, before he goes down to the galley. Each Tuesday morning, he there meets the chief onboard administrator for a coffee, before they do the routine security checks on the bridge.