Japanese MOL announced an agreement with Furuno Electric Co., Ltd. and MOL Techno-Trade, Ltd. to jointly develop a system that supports ship operation during voyages using augmented reality (AR) technology.
In this project, information, such as other ships sailing around the vessel and landmarks like buoys at sea, can be shown on tablets and other displays, based on data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS).
Images of landscapes taken from the bridge can also be shown on the same tablets, and these images will overlap with AR to provide visual support to crewmembers operating ships and keeping watch during voyages.
Looking at ways to overlap displays of obstacles taken by radar, MOL is adding an Obstacle Zone by Target (OZT), an algorithm to prevent collisions between vessels, and supplementing displays of obstacles using image recognition technologies to expand such functions. Functions will be improved during FY2018.
MOL expects this technology to play a key role in realizing autonomous ships in the future.
