MOL tests AI to estimate vessel speed, fuel consumption at sea

The project is a part of an initiative to assess the effectiveness of artificial intelligence technology, and aims to reduce fuel consumption and vessels’ environmental impact by verifying the technology’s accuracy, according to the Japanese ocean carrier.    Japanese ocean carrier Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL) has teamed up with Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. and Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology to verify the accuracy of technology that estimates vessel performance at sea by applying Fujitsu’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology to its fleet, MOL confirmed Nov. 8.
   The project, MOL said, is a part of an initiative to assess the effectiveness of AI tech, and aims to reduce fuel consumption and vessels’ environmental impact by verifying the accuracy of the technology, using Fujitsu’s artificial intelligence.
   “MOL aims to become the corporate group that customers think of first when they choose a logistics business partner, by drawing upon AI and ICT technologies to enhance its services,” the company said in a statement.
   As part of the test, MOL provided actual voyage data collected from MOL fleet in operation to Fujitsu Laboratories, which, along with Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, verified the data by using their jointly developed machine learning method.
   The voyage data provided by MOL included about 30 items in all, the Japanese transport company said, including vessel speed, fuel consumption, main engine rpm, wind direction and wind speed during the period of Oct. 12, 2015 through Dec.13, 2015.
   Fujitsu’s AI and high-dimensional statistics analysis technology were able to estimate ship speed from the data other than the speed, and verified the comparison between the estimated value and actual operation data. This same assessment was also applied to fuel consumption, MOL said.
   The results indicated that the AI could estimate vessel speed with about a 1.4 percent allowance, and fuel consumption with an allowance of about 0.8 percent.