Another option available to shipping companies and vessel owners to monitor operations in real-time without maxing out the bandwidth is using edge computing, deploying powerful computers and data storage closer to the location where it is needed, such as on ships to improve response times, provide low latency between sensor and user and save bandwidth.
By processing data on ships, owners can focus transmissions to shore providing key information on performance indicators, alerts from trend changes and condition issues, analytics insight and vital parameters.
This minimises bandwidth requirements for ship and onboard equipment monitoring, while reducing demand on people at both ends of communications.
It also lowers requirements form onshore processing and cloud computing. There are other applications for edge computing in emerging technologies for autonomous vessels and navigation. Here, processors can provide information for onboard decision support systems.
IBM’s advanced edge computing systems and automation software are an important component of AI-assisted navigation on the Mayflower autonomous ship project.
Edge computing is also scheduled to be deployed on Yara Birkeland. With more companies investing in remote monitoring and semi-autonomous shipping there will be higher demand for edge computers.
