A leading maritime industry alliance has added artificial intelligence (AI) to its skill set to help deliver autonomous ecosystems
One Sea alliance has added Finnish start-up Awake.AI to provide intelligent innovations to the maritime logistics sector to deliver optimisation and digital applications to shipowners and port operators.
Awake.AI chief executive Karno Tenovuo says the technology it is developing will enable greater application of autonomous systems in maritime logistics.
“Our task is to develop the digital handshakes – application interfaces – between different supply-chain actors, freeing data to enable smarter ships and ensure their acceptance by smart ports,” says Mr Tenovuo.
Awake.AI joins One Sea, a commercially neutral industry cluster, companies ABB, Cargotec, Ericsson, Inmarsat, Kongsberg Maritime, MTI, Tieto, Wärtsilä and a range of other maritime stakeholders.
Together they are developing technology for autonomous shipping, smart ports and remote supply-chain management.
One Sea ecosystem lead Jukka Merenluoto believes AI is an important element to developing autonomous systems. “Enabling the smooth flow of data between different players is integral to One Sea’s roadmap to transition from remote monitoring to remote control, and to increasing vessel autonomy by 2025,” he said.
“We also advocate the benefits of maritime digitalisation in its own right, to minimise incidents, decrease marine traffic’s environmental footprint and improve commercial efficiency.”
He said adding start-ups, such as Awake.AI, will provide different ideas to the well-established technology firms aiming to develop autonomous ships.
“It is important we accommodate newer players, like Awake.AI, who can bring fresh perspectives on how to meet the challenges on the road towards realising workable autonomous solutions,” said Mr Merenluoto.
Awake.AI is aiming to create a new platform and machine learning models based on transparent data sharing between ships, ports and other stakeholders in the maritime logistics chain.
Its virtual infrastructure could enable ports to handle autonomous ships successfully from pre-arrival, through cargo operations and to onward departure, said Mr Tenovuo.
“Already, we are having conversations with One Sea stakeholders from across the ecosystem to work through strategies to create standards and pathways that will facilitate autonomous shipping.”
Ports will need to become more intelligent in how they share information to further autonomy in maritime, said Port of Rotterdam head of digital strategy and transformation Martijn Thijsen.
“We need to rethink and transform,” he said. “We need to share data and be open to collaboration in business.” He thinks co-operation with maritime stakeholders will enable AI technology to be tested and further developed.
“It is about the ecosystem. We need to continue current business models and then be ready for five years down the line when it will be completely different. Ports will need to handle autonomous ships.”
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