Japanese shipping group NYK and AI technology firm Ghelia have entered into a business and capital alliance, which will see NYK make an investment in Ghelia and work with the company on the development of new systems.
The two companies will collaborate on R&D for autonomous ships, collision avoidance navigation, and other related areas, while also introducing Ghelia’s AI technologies to business processes in NYK’s sales and corporate divisions.
Ghelia’s development to date has focused on technologies such as AI in edge terminals, deep reinforcement learning, image data processing, and natural language processing. Under this new alliance agreement, NYK and Ghelia will work to bring those AI technologies into practical use at NYK within the shipping context.
Projects will include the design of digital engineering processes and digital twins, development of fully autonomous ship systems, technology development for decarbonisation, and services to support enhanced vessel safety.
“We are convinced that this capital and business alliance with Ghelia, which has been providing AI solutions to a wide variety of customers through the company’s strength in AI development and deep reinforcement learning, will hugely contribute to further technological development in the shipping industry and the promotion of business DX (digital transformation) through the utilisation of AI,” said Hideki Suzuki, Executive Officer at NYK.
“In the future, we expect to not only practically utilise AI technologies in NYK but also work on creating new value by providing AI services that lead the shipping industry.”
