London-based Orca AI has released new functionality, ‘Co-Captain’, that will enable ship-based personnel to share intelligence and operational data with other ships on the system in real time. The company, set up in Tel Aviv in 2018, now has 1,000 connected ships on the network with about 500 more set to join in the months ahead.
Yarden Gross, co-founder and CEO, says the new system will enable far more data to be collected and shared at scale between vessels, providing additional decision support and intelligence on issues including prevailing weather, congestion, navigational hazards, accidents, safety, security and piracy, GNSS interference, fuel efficiency, environmental compliance, and local regulations.
The system will ensure that shore-based managers are also kept fully up-to-date on real-time conditions prevailing on ships at sea, enabling faster decisions and improvements to efficiency. Seafarers engaged on voyages through perilous waters will also take solace from the new connectivity.
Each vessel on the Orca AI network will be a node in the global system, continuously detecting risks. These are uploaded to the cloud whereupon appropriate alerts can be issued to vessels in the same area or on intersecting routes. The database is constantly updated but all data is fully anonymised, with only prevailing conditions and location reported.
Actionable voyage-based alerts, early risk detection, and centralised awareness in real time are set to raise ship efficiency and improve safety. Co-Captain will become progressively more powerful over time, as more ships are connected in more regions of the world’s oceans.
“This could very well be the most accurate crowdsourced navigation engine in shipping,” declared Gross. “Every addition to the fleet strengthens that shared awareness, enhancing how ships anticipate risk and support one another. Given that 90% of world trade goes by sea, this kind of collaborative navigation is no longer optional – it’s a safety, environmental and security imperative. The database constantly updates what is happening on global routes, empowering officers to make more resilient navigation decisions,” he added.
Greek owners have been amongst the company’s first clients. Customers include the Lemos family-owned Enesel Group, Spyros Vlassopoulos’ Ionic Shipping, Angelicoussis-owned Maran Tankers Management, and George Economou’s TMS Cardiff Gas. Other notable owners on the Orca AI network include MSC, NYK and Seaspan.
Captain Giorgos Asteros, Operations Director, Maran Tankers Management gave the branding “Co-Captain” short shrift at a seminar held by Orca AI and NorthStandard in Singapore last month saying he would never put something with that name on their vessels. The name stirs up controversy in terms of the debate over the level of authority given to AI in relation to the human Captain and officers on the bridge.
