1. Artificial Intelligence
The maritime sector deploys artificial intelligence for various applications such as predictive maintenance, autonomous navigation, and route optimization, among others. However, the critical role of AI in these functions is to process the vast data available through sensors, public information systems, and asset tracking to generate actionable insights. Startups leverage the processed information to improve forecasting accuracy and optimize fuel efficiency, maintenance, and operational costs. Apart from that, AI in underwater robots and vehicles facilitates search and rescue operations along with assisting underwater repairs. Startups also provide digital twins of ports, ships, and fleets using AI to monitor their operations continuously, improving vessel and port management.
2. Clean Energy
Marine heavy fuel oil (HFO), a petroleum-based product, is the most common propulsion fuel in ships, accounting for a great deal of the emissions from maritime operations. Like other industries, transitioning to low-carbon, renewable energy sources is crucial for maritime decarbonization. For this, the industry is looking up to electric propulsion technologies, biofuels, wind energy, solar power, and hydrogen fuel. Many startups already offer retrofittable devices to electrify boats. To strengthen this transition, large marine companies need to integrate low-carbon fuels throughout their fleet. Biofuels are an economical and low-carbon choice for a start as it readily replaces HFO without any structural upgrades. The overall trend is moving towards electric and hydrogen propulsion as they have huge impacts on emissions without affecting vessel productivity.
3. Maritime Robotics
Lack of workers and their safety in marine environments are growing concerns in the maritime sector. To tackle these issues, startups are building maritime robotics solutions with AI and advanced hardware. Apart from pick-and-carry robots that assist in logistics operations, robots tailored for maritime maintenance, cleaning, rescue, and inspection are also becoming mainstream. For instance, startups offer automated robots that take over underwater maintenance tasks. For this, the robots have specialized arms and hardware systems. Similarly, drones are used at ports and ships for inspections and provision delivery. Apart from replacing workers, the robots lower the workers’ exposure to life-threatening conditions during maintenance and inspections.
4. Energy-Efficient Integrations
Maritime companies increasingly seek to use energy-efficient integrations for minimizing GHG emissions and fuel costs. This entails improvements of various systems in the vessel, from scrubber and rudder to lubrication, coatings, and propulsion systems. For example, some startups provide waste heat recovery solutions while others work on improvements in the ship and exhaust design. These additions allow maritime companies to significantly improve the sustainability of their operations while reducing energy and fuel costs.
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5. Maritime IoT
Continuous tracking and monitoring of ships’ location is a critical process in maritime operations. This minimizes the collision risks as well as facilitates ship navigation to mitigate challenging weather conditions. IoT integration also simplifies location data acquisition while enabling tracking of various other parameters such as emissions, machine conditions, propulsion data, and structural integrity. Read the continue of the story by visiting the source bellow.
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