system on board. The first job for the AI team is to sit down with the owner or operator to understand their specific objectives and how data analytics could help them to increase performance. Although every system can be monitored, this doesn’t mean they all should be: efforts are focused on what is critical to that specific application and that specific client.
Superyacht owners, for example, will have different priorities regarding the systems they wish to monitor compared to a commercial ship. “Our role is to introduce a suite of analytics solutions to our customers which are tailored to their individual pain points,” explains Leslie Bell-Friedel, global business manager at Caterpillar Marine Asset Intelligence. “Some customers will want to focus on increasing the reliability of machinery operations, while others will be focused on optimising vessel productivity, ensuring safety and/ or operating more sustainably. This technology not only monitors running conditions, but [also] it leverages analytics to understand the interrelations of different variables on the overall system and incorporates historical data to predict future failure modes.”
Therefore, the benefits of such technology for superyachts would be improved operations and equipment maintenance, increased fuel and energy efficiency and ensured safety and compliance with regulations, including water treatment, emissions and waste discharges. David Shannon, business development manager – Americas at Caterpillar Marine Asset Intelligence, says the technology could be easily integrated on superyachts. “We are used to having 120 military vessels or large commercial customers that need to roll into a single user interface,” he explains. “This fleet approach can be brought down to the micro level: you have a superyacht with multiple systems and want one user interface to look at.”
Although Shannon believes that AI would fit extremely well within superyacht operations, there would certainly be barriers given the variety of applications, systems and components. “In theory, superyachts should be our easiest opportunity from a new-build standpoint but the challenge is that there is so much customisation in the components and systems in this sector,” he explains. This level of
54 | The Report • September 2018 • Issue 85
customisation would mean creating a new baseline analytics model for each vessel.
While automation is undoubtedly incredibly valuable technology, it does still depend on individual components and, by their very nature, these are susceptible to failure. Only this year, Uber’s autonomous vehicle-testing made headlines following a crash that killed a woman in Arizona. On yachts, safe operation will rely on using automation alongside a documented and structured manual check process. These future solutions will then not only increase safety on board, but also eventually reduce the need for human- machine interaction by automating selected tasks and processes, while the captain and crew remain at the centre of critical decision-making and on-board expertise. In the longer term, efforts in remote and autonomous operations will pave the way to autonomous ships.
This article first appeared on the Superyacht News web site. It is reprinted here by kind permission of The Superyacht Group.
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