Lloyd’s Register (LR) has announced a collaboration with The Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and AI, to provide independent assurance and testing services for maritime organisations adopting artificial intelligence systems and other digital technologies.
The aim is to streamline the testing process for AI-enabled maritime technology to speed up digitalisation in the industry while still maintaining safety and minimising risk, allowing for the necessary learning to take place to create the requirements and standards that will be required in the future.
“LR has always aimed to streamline our assurance processes to help make our clients more competitive in their business,” said Joseph Morelos, Maritime AI Applications Innovation Leader, Lloyd’s Register.
“Our collaboration with The Alan Turing Institute will help to deliver unprecedented operational gains for our clients, whilst making securing remote and/or data-based information easier. We are proud to pool our resources with our partners as we drive forward digitalisation in the maritime industry.”
Lloyd’s Register Foundation has had an existing strategic partnership with The Alan Turing Institute since 2016, collaborating to establish the Institute’s Data Centric Engineering Programme.
In related news, LR has also awarded Furuno Hellas with ‘Digital Twin Approved Certification’ for its HermAce monitoring platform and Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) digital twin, as an alternative to onboard annual VDR performance testing, with verification conducted in partnership with The Alan Turing Institute.
The process, based on LR’s ShipRight Digital Compliance Framework, saw more than 1,000 normal and adverse test cases simulated in a software-in-the-loop test environment, including dozens of physical fault-seeding tests to establish that the VDR digital twin can monitor a physical VDR under normal, abnormal and failure operating conditions.
The certification awarded by LR is said to be the first independent verification of digital twin technology in the maritime industry.
Furuno was previously awarded Approval in Principle (AiP) for its voyage data recorder digital twin for HermAce, the first verification review carried out by a classification society of a digital twin specifically designed for this purpose.
