The application’s user interface resembles a task-centered dashboard. The dashboard provides real-time awareness of the vessels’ condition. This is achieved via the extensive monitoring and logging of the fleet’s state: from vessel’s position and velocity, to an extended system logging of its technical specifications and maintenance data recording. In addition, it supports multiple users within different access levels. The combination of these features allows for efficiency when critical resolution is required, beginning by identifying and prioritizing, to analyzing and interpreting variables, in order to further rectify all errors to a successful outcome.

 

There is a real-time flow of information from each vessel to the database regarding meter data, consisting but not limited to propulsion/hotelling procedures, fuelling data, particulate matter emissions, as well as emissions from other pollutants. Accumulation of this kind of data allows Canopus to provide on-line insights, by employing task-specific AI algorithms that are continuously trained and re-deployed. Complementary to these real-time suggestions, the extracted data are utilized from SeaQuest’s Data Scientists in order to provide periodical consultation services, as well as long term solutions. This combination of on-line and off-line services is the derivative to ensuring the successful optimization of the vessels’ operations related to any relevant parameters.

The recently agreed regulations by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) coming into effect on January 1st 2023 are aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% until 2030. Consequently, the carbon intensity and energy efficiency of all vessels will be under scrutiny in the following years, in order to ensure that they are in compliance with IMO’s technical and operational thresholds. Through Canopus, SeaQuest provides a real-time on-line calculation of the Energy Efficiency eXisting ship Index (EEXI) and Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) levels, using live data obtained from sensors that detect emissions and power consumption. This allows fleet managers and stakeholders to monitor the ship’s technical and operational performance with regards to these indices.

As far as cost efficiency and performance optimization are concerned, each vessel’s fuel consumption is continuously monitored throughout every voyage in conjunction with the factors that impact it the most, such as the vessel’s propulsion, the engines’ power, as well as hotel loads. Furthermore, operational risks are continuously assessed throughout each trip, by factoring in both static and dynamic agents, such as the vessel’s particulars and the local weather conditions, respectively.

 

Last but not least, Canopus is built on the fundamental idea that each and every subsystem on the vessel is a link of a functional chain. Any deviation from the optimal state for a given link reduces the functionality of the whole chain, increasing the costs either directly (via performance loss) or indirectly (via increasing maintenance costs). This being the case, Canopus allows for swift assessments of the link responsible for the performance loss, while also ensuring that maintenance costs are kept to a minimum by employing a RCM procedure.

In marine context, Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) is a process aimed at ensuring that all of the vessel’s physical assets operate as designed. In most cases, asset maintenance is performed based only on the manufacturer’s maintenance bulletin, and on rare occasions, inspections are scheduled based on vessel-specific analyses of historical reports on failures and malfunctions of individual parts. Canopus takes this latter data-driven approach and brings it to the next level. By using extracted information from the electronic logging system (vessel-wise equipment cataloging) and a set of logical rules combined with AI algorithms, it proposes per-asset maintenance schedules, in accordance with safety restrictions. This type of preventive maintenance leads to a significant reduction of the average down-time of assets that have malfunctioned, thus minimizing operational and maintenance costs, while also reducing the crew’s daily workload.

 

A particular case of asset maintenance concerns the scrubber towers recently installed aboard vessels in order to abide by the aforementioned regulations regarding emissions. Among the most commonly encountered complications in scrubber towers are thermal shocks, which lead to corrosion that gradually propagates across the system and eventually reaches the exhaust gas system. By continuously monitoring the scrubber towers’ steel condition, we are able to identify abrasions or other types of damage, thereby ensuring minimal repair costs and preventing their complete breakdown.

Canopus employs a variety of state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms and models that provide on-line forecasts on a series of carefully selected features. These features are extracted from data which are mined not only from pre-existing sensors on the vessels, but also from custom sensors, specifically chosen, installed and calibrated by SeaQuest for the purposes of our analyses. SeaQuest’s vision goes even further, with our R&D department already researching the integration of automation systems that will further reduce the vessels’ operational costs, via automating procedures streamlining crew efficiency. Once the required legislation is adopted, SeaQuest aspires to be the forerunner to real-world trials, starting with individual systems’ autonomy and working towards full automation.

The increasing complexity of a vessel’s functions generates the need for real-time information sharing between a variety of agents: from Captain and Crew to Managers and Maintenance Crews. In many cases, information needed for decision making does not get passed to the proper level, thus causing costly delays. For example, a delayed repair could lead to increased costs, either directly from the extended damage, or indirectly due to the downtime of the equipment. The existence of a Shore Command Center (SCC) that allows for real-time monitoring of the company’s fleet could significantly minimize these delays. The SCC can be accessed from everywhere in the world, by individuals with different clearance levels, thanks to Canopus’ interactivity and access levels system. From the Chief Engineer to the company’s CEO and stakeholders, each person has access to all needed information, allowing for efficiency in the decision-making process.