NYK partners with Monohakobi Technology Institute (MTI) and Japan Marine Science (JMS) to develop a system that assists with vessel berthing. The patent helps a vessel to be easily controlled and also visualizes the challenges in the berthing operation to decrease the burden on the operator and mitigate accidents caused by human factors.
According to NYK there have been already conducted trials on actual vessels. Therefore, the company aims to present the software to its managed ships. In the future, JMS will be the one to sale the software within the industry.
The technology is expected to be applied to the automatic shore-arriving system for manned autonomous ships that the NYK Group has been working to implement.
Moreover, when a vessel is berthing, a guidelines presents the exact reduction in ship speed as the distance to the wharf nears.
Based on this guideline, the vessel intakes wind and tidal information, while the operator provides instructions to tugs while also trying to control the rudder and the vessel’s engine.
Normally, the ship operator receives information around the vessel and gives instructions to a number of relevant, to the situation, people.
NYK states that it seems that the responsibilities of the operators are many. Thus, there’s a possibility of an ease-to-accidents caused by human factors.
In attempts of avoiding accidents caused by human factor, the NYK Group worked to develop a system to help with berthing and subsequently eliminate accidents.
In this project, the software evaluates the ship’s situation, is able to visualize risks in real time and also provide information as distance to the wharf, ship speed, ship-performance parameters, tugboat arrangement, and weather data.
In addition, the ship operator can use a tablet to confirm the relative position and approach speed of the vessel and assess accident risk.
This can reduce the burden ship operators are facing and prevent berthing accidents by alerting of risks to prevent accidents caused by misjudgment, NYK commented.
