The tech company Orca AI is expanding its range of autonomous navigation solutions: the ‘BerthView’ berthing system is now available on the market. It was developed in collaboration with Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI).
‘BerthView’ is a technical solution designed to assist ships when berthing in ports. The system combines Orca AI’s digital watch officer ‘SeaPod’ with Samsung’s berthing assistant ‘SVISION’. Together, the systems are designed to enable continuous, AI-supported situational awareness, from navigation on the open sea through to the final phase of berthing.
Orca AI and SHI announced a strategic partnership in April to develop cutting-edge technologies. With the launch of “BerthView”, the first commercially available solution for shipowners and operators has now emerged from this collaboration.
The system is also designed to be installed as a retrofit on vessels already in service. According to a joint statement, this paves the way for “deploying advanced navigation and autonomous functions in both newbuilds and existing fleets”. The programme is designed for ports with confined manoeuvring spaces, where the crew often has little time to assess a developing situation and act quickly.
Tech expertise from both companies on board
Orca AI’s “SeaPod” system uses AI and computer vision to detect, track and assess objects and navigational hazards – from the open sea through to busy coastal waters and harbour entrances. As the vessel enters the phase of manoeuvring in confined spaces, at low speed and, finally, docking, BerthView adds a specialised perception layer to the system.
Fisheye cameras installed on the bridge corners provide a 360-degree (bird’s-eye) view of the vessel and its surroundings, similar to the parking assistance systems found in modern cars. Visual distance indicators and a virtual safety zone help the crew to assess the available space and the distance to other vessels, quay walls and other potential hazards.
The new solution is designed not only to provide the bridge crew with a continuous view of the operational environment, but also to link navigation events directly to ‘FleetView’, Orca AI’s cloud-based platform for safety and fleet operations. This enables shore-based teams to identify recurring risks, investigate incidents, substantiate claims for damages, and utilise actual operational events for structured crew training and learning processes across the entire fleet.
SHI’s portfolio for autonomous vessels includes the “Samsung Autonomous System” (SAS), which ensures economically optimised voyages through automatic route updates and vessel speed control, as well as “SVISION” for manoeuvring in confined spaces and berthing manoeuvres.
“This market launch is an important step towards turning our shared vision of autonomous shipping into a scalable, commercial reality,” said Yarden Gross, CEO and co-founder of Orca AI. “By combining Orca AI’s AI-powered operations platform with Samsung Heavy Industries’ advanced shipbuilding and autonomy expertise, we can already offer shipowners immediate operational value whilst laying the technological foundations for increasingly autonomous vessel operations. The ability to integrate ‘BerthView’ into existing fleets as a retrofit solution provides us with an effective way to bring these technologies to the global shipping market on a large scale.”
“Autonomous shipping is achieved by integrating advanced technologies into the vessel, creating a single, intelligent, integrated system,” added Hyun Joe Kim, Head of SHI’s Research Institute. “The collaboration with Orca AI is a significant step in this direction. By combining SVISION and SAS with Orca AI’s AI-powered navigation technology, we are extending intelligent navigation to cover a greater part of the voyage – from sailing on the open sea to manoeuvring in confined spaces and berthing operations. In doing so, we are creating a scalable foundation for the next generation of autonomous ships.”
