Wärtsilä is developing new hardware and software for its integrated bridge platform for voyage planning, ice operations and collision prevention
Wärtsilä is enhancing the Nacos Platinum integrated bridge system hardware and software, two years after gaining this technology through the acquisition of SAM Electronics from L-3. The upgrade work involves adding voyage planning stations and solid-state radar.
Wärtsilä is also updating the software on this bridge system’s platform with more radar applications and algorithms as it helps the industry develop intelligent shipping.
In an exclusive interview, Wärtsilä product manager for navigation products Eberhard Maass told Marine Electronics & Communications that new integrated products will become available through these developments.
“We are currently improving the platform by introducing new monitors for the integrated bridge for use by all types of applications, such as radar, ECDIS, conning, automation and engine controls,” he said. This includes introducing high definition 32 in and 55 in monitors to complement existing 22 in and 24 in displays currently offered.
“There will be voyage planning stations, or tactical tables, incorporating more functionality to ease route planning and monitoring,” said Mr Maass. These stations will incorporate further layers of information on electronic navigational charts, such as weather and environmental data, such as wind, current, sea state and air pressure.
“Three-to-seven day weather forecasts can be used to optimise voyages, to organise pilots and route around bad weather, then optimise the speed over the route,” Mr Maass explained to MEC. Wärtsilä is also adding small monitors to navigator, master and pilot chairs so that other bridge systems and external applications can be operated from those positions.
"We are working on solid state S-band radar that will be available at the end of 2018"
Wärtsilä is also developing radar technology. “We are working on solid state S-band radar that will be available at the end of 2018 and working on functionality that we are calling intelligent radar merging,” said Mr Maass. This will allow two X-band and S-band radar feeds to be merged into one image, which enables bridge teams to use the advantages of both bands, such as the long range of S-band and short-range and high definition of X-band.
“There are also plans to incorporate radar applications that come with non-SOLAS radar, such as wave radar, ice and oil detection and video analytics,” he added. Radar can be used for multiple target detection and analytics and for measuring wave height, period and direction. This comes from advances in algorithms to detect the different types of target, which is useful for Polar navigation.
Wärtsilä is also developing methods for incorporating infrared camera images. “This is useful to cruise ships operating in East Asia where there are many wooden boats, which cannot be easily detected by commercial navigation radar,” Mr Maass explained. This is because wood is not as radar reflective as metal, but heat traces from these boats can be tracked.
For the longer term, Wärtsilä is planning e-navigation and intelligent applications for bridge systems, such as its Smart Predict application. It is participating in the Sea Traffic Management (STM) project for voyage planning and execution and connected logistics chains. This is being administered by Swedish and Danish maritime authorities with the aim to include up to 300 ships, 13 ports and five shore centres.
Wärtsilä’s main part of this project is delivering bridge systems for the ships involved and Mr Maass explained how information is exchanged with all the main partners in the project. “Route plans and schedules are communicated by ships to ports so arrivals can be planned, pilots can be made available and there will be fewer vessel queues,” he said. “Ship masters can plan more optimised schedules with information from the shore.”
He added: “We are working on intelligent vessels with more functionality and packages such as anti-collision or anti-grounding features and functions for ECDIS and automatic docking.” These advanced software features should provide more information to bridge teams and improve navigation safety.
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