At the International WorkBoat Show, a number of panel discussions and presentations focused on the ways that technology is shaping the present and future of the maritime industry. From satellite connectivity to 3D scanning to autonomous vessels, technology was a key component of the first day of conference programming. Among those presentations was one given by Karl Birgir Björnsson, the CEO and Co-Founder of Hefring Marine.
Björnsson’s presentation on Tuesday, entitled "Enabling AI-driven Vessel Operations," focused on the company’s Intelligent Marine Assistance System (IMAS). This platform leverages artificial intelligence to adapt to environmental conditions in real-time, helping to improve safety and fuel consumption for marine operations. Björnsson reports that the company has tested the system in over 40,000 trips covering over 450,000 nautical miles across a variety of activities, including tourism, rescue, fishing, and more.
Building off displays already integrated on the vessel, IMAS provides two views for the on-board crew to toggle between. One view shows the speed of the boat relative to what the system has deemed as optimal for safe traveling, while the other prioritizes optimal fuel inefficiency. For the latter, captains can see a range of either speed or RPMs in which they should remain for maximum fuel efficiency.
IMAS comes along at a time when the industry is searching for solutions to exactly the problems Hefring Marine is trying to solve. With the Department of Energy reporting that the maritime industry as a whole contributes about 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, the need for more sustainable practices is readily apparent, and these sorts of AI-powered systems are likely to be a key in driving this future.
Björnsson noted that IMAS leverages the systems that are already on-board the vessel, including sensors on the hull as well as in the engine and other parts, using artificial intelligence to connect the information from these systems and turn them into simple insights that users can intuitively use. That information is given to the captain on board, as noted above, but also to users on shore. Here, fleet operators can view all vessels in a fleet either in real-time or after their trips and receive reports about trips that may have included a number of high impacts exceeding a preset threshold.
The presentation also included a real-world example of how this system was used effectively, looking at how IMAS was used by a Nordic search and rescue crew. Björnsson showed an instance where a young, less experienced captain was driving the boat through an area that is notoriously choppy. The trip included a number of high impacts with the water due to high speeds, and ultimately damage to the vessel from those impacts. Hefring Marine was able to run reports about where exactly the impacts came, along with 3D visualizations of those impacts, which the architects used to identify a design flaw with the vessel and quickly fix the others in the fleet before similar issues arose.
While IMAS has been implemented in a number of vessels at this point, the next area in which Hefring is looking to move is into the unmanned vessel space, where Björnsson said they are going to start working in 2025. He said that while there is obviously not any concern around passenger sensitivity on these vessels, there is still crucial and expensive equipment on board that can be damaged if speeds exceed recommended thresholds, and companies are increasingly interested in monitoring and controlling those speeds as well as the vessels fuel consumption.
