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Kpler and Airbus roll out technology to track vessels when AIS is turned off
The companies have agreed to share information on vessels in a new service that uses Airbus’s Spot Earth observation satellite imagery and artificial intelligence
Airbus and Kpler have joined forces to track vessels when they are not using their automatic identification system (AIS) transmitters.
The companies have launched a new service that uses Airbus’s Spot Earth observation’s 1.5-m resolution satellite imagery across a 60-km swath alongside artificial intelligence.
The goal of the service is to detect vessels at sea and in port independently of their AIS signals and to enable authorities to track vessels when they have turned off their AIS transmissions or when their positioning is disrupted by interference to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS).
IMO-mandated AIS is the backbone of vessel reporting, visibility, and safety across the shipping industry, but many vessel operators are not following the rules, especially if they are attempting to evade authorities.
GNSS interruptions can come from jamming or spoofing of these satellite signals, which puts ships at risk of groundings or collisions with other vessels.
Satellite imagery is an additional layer to Kpler’s AIS network, which captures millions of these signals each day indicating vessel position, speed, course, draught and destination.
"No single data source tells the whole story," said Kpler vice president for maritime and logistics, Jean-Charles Gordon.
"By combining AIS data with satellite imagery and other independent sources, we can give the maritime industry and governments a clearer, more complete and verifiable picture of what is happening at sea," he said.
Ship signals can be manipulated for different reasons; potentially by vessels deliberately trying to hide, or through an area-wide disruption that affects multiple ships in one area.
"When a vessel’s AIS signal disappears, this combined intelligence helps us distinguish between widespread signal disruptions and deliberate attempts by individual vessels to evade detection," said Mr Gordon.
"That distinction is critical to ensuring transparency, strengthening maritime security and maintaining trust in global shipping,” he said.
Unseenlabs uses radio frequency transmissions from ships to detect and track them when their AIS signals are turned off. It is expanding the network of 25 satellites it already operates.
The Rennes, France-headquartered company launched two new satellites on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket – the Bro-23 first-generation nanosatellite and the Gen 2 Bro-32 microsatellite – on 1 October to increase its ship-detection capabilities.
“The launch of BRO-23 and BRO-32 shows how our two generations complement each other,” said Unseenlabs co-founder and chief executive Clément Galic.
“We continue to strengthen our maritime capabilities with Gen 1, while Gen 2 expands the types of emitters we can detect at sea, on land and in space,” he said.
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