Japanese shipping company ‘K’ Line has partnered with TIS Inc and Miotsukushi Analytics to jointly developed a new AI-powered draft survey application.
The software uses artificial intelligence (AI) to recognise the water surface and draft mark from images captured with a smartphone, to display an accurate draft level while accounting for the impact of waves, which are removed on the screen.
The three companies jointly filed a patent application for the newly developed application at the end of July.
Draft is measured to calculate the weight of cargo loaded onto dry bulk carriers, usually by crew members and surveyors using the naked eye while the vessel is at anchorage, which in some ports may be susceptible to waves.
The automatic draft survey application makes use of the ‘AI and data analysis service’ offered by TIS and Miotsukushi and integrates users’ own smartphones to improve safety in cargo operations and maximise cargo transportation volume. The software creates a model of the draft mark and the water surface, deploying a coordinate computing algorithm to calculate the draft through image detection.
