Japan’s shipping company Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK) Group has collaborated with Orca AI, developer of an automated situational awareness platform, to improve the safety of its fleet.
NYK Group has confirmed that the Orca AI platform will be installed across its fleet, which includes bulk carriers, tankers, and container ships.
The collaboration between the two parties began in August 2020, when NYK and MTI deployed a trial version of Orca AI’s platform on an NYK vessel. Since then, NYK Group and Orca have successfully performed an autonomous trip experiment in crowded seas around Japan’s east coast as part of the Designing the Future of Full Autonomous Ships (DFFAS) collaboration, which involves 30 Japanese firms.
The NYK experiment, known as the MEGURI2040 Project, was conducted aboard Suzaku, a 749 gross tonne autonomous container ship outfitted with Orca’s artificial intelligence and deep-learning technology. Travelling from Tokyo Bay to Tsumatsusaka in Ise Bay, the vessel completed 40 hours of navigation with total autonomy for almost 98% of the voyage.
“Orca AI demonstrated that the safety of shipping operations can be improved by automating the task of target detection in low visibility in congested waters,” stated Captain Jun Nakamura, manager of the autonomous ship team at NYK Group.
He further added, “The platform serves as an automated lookout and recognizes dangerous targets and other vessels that may be overlooked by the human eye, reducing the probability of incidents at sea.”
