In an article published in Swedish Club’s Triton, the Club and Orca AI, discuss the challenges that today’s digital tools present for seafarers, and explain how can AI be used in order to address these problems and ensure a safe navigation.
More specifically, according to the Swedish Club’s analysis, about 80% of all vessel collisions take place in water which would be defined as congested. These places could be approaching port, in the anchorage, in coastal waters, in canals and rivers, or in traffic separation scheme areas.
Analyzing these accidents, the Swedish Club notes that:
The most immediate cause of a collision is lack of situational awareness, and more specifically the bridge officer is not fully aware of what is happening around a vessel and is not aware of the consequences of what he does, whether action or inaction
Furthermore, as Philip Nielsen, General Manager Europe, ORCA AI explains, today’s bridge technology, especially in these congested areas, could give the crew a “somehow complex, confusing, noisy picture of the situation.”
However, to address these issues, AI (artificial intelligence) is increasingly being used to prevent collisions and enhance fleet safety. As Mr. Nielsen noted on a recent SMART4SEA Virtual Talk:
With more than 4.000 ship incidents and collisions taking place each year and with most of the incidents happening in very congested areas, artificial-intelligence is a “game-changer” that enhances situational awareness and mitigates navigational risks
Such a technology can create a machine learning algorithm that analyses and prioritises all the data and risks, thus helping the crew to understand clearly any difficult or dangerous situation and take the best decision.
What is more, Dor Raviv, CTO and co-founder of Orca AI, explains that deep learning algorithms perform real-time marine target detection, tracking, classification and fusion, to create situational awareness in real time.
What do you do with this? You wrap it up and present it in a beautiful user interface which is very easy to understand. Aids to navigation, docked ships, navigational hazards are all labelled
Moreover, focusing on the increasing importance of connectivity, Orca AI Co-founder and CEO Yarden Gross, noted that the rapid improvements in ship connectivity are the real accelerator. As he highlighted:
Now there is a major change – connectivity is going to transform the entire industry and it will do it very quickly. When the ship is completely connected to the Cloud, you will be able to deploy technology much more easily and make the operation more efficient
EXPLORE MORE IN SWEDISH CLUB’S ARTICLE
