Tech Tuesday: AI Safety and the Vendée Globe

OSCAR’s aim is to prevent a collision with any of the many potential threats a vessel can encounter at sea. That could be other vessels, unidentified floating objects such as logs, buoys or containers, as well as sleeping sea mammals – any of which could put a skipper out of the race…or worse. OSCAR will instantly alert the skipper of any potential danger and indicates the position of that threat on a dedicated map. The skipper can view and record the images transmitted from OSCAR’s cameras.

The development of OSCAR

Put to the test

This Vendée Globe will be OSCAR’s most severe test to date.  18 of the 33 IMOCA competing in this winter’s solo lap of the planet have been fitted with the latest OSCAR system. This comprises a compact, lightweight masthead-mounted box containing forward-looking day and night cameras, linked to OSCAR’s processor down below that in turn connects to any type of display.
Ships of old used to have a man ‘up the crow’s nest’ able to survey the expanded horizon from the top of the mast – it is here that the shout ‘LAND AHOY’ comes from in pirate films. OSCAR performs a similar duty, only it does so electronically day and night continuously. OSCAR’s innovation is to use artificial intelligence, and more precisely artificial vision, the technology that enables a machine to analyse, process and understand images.

Safety at sea

OSCAR is making its contribution to the development of safety at sea. It is not the perfect or ultimate anti-collision system, but it is pioneering a technology that will contribute greatly. It will also improve with every mile sailed, for like a human being, the more OSCAR learns and the more experience it gains, the better it performs. The 18 IMOCA’s fitted with OSCAR will each provide huge learning opportunities to fine tune the database, at the core of OSCAR’s learning.

A reliable collision warning system is the holy grail of marine safety aids. While OSCAR is being put through its paces and continues to ‘learn’ on solo non-stop round the world race boats, its applications elsewhere are far-reaching, starting with all types of pleasure boats that venture offshore, but also for ships and commercial vessels and of course the many un-manned boats currently under development around the world.
Like the skippers of the Vendée Globe, the famous sailor, Jimmy Cornell, founder of the World Cruising Club and successful author of the World Cruising Routes, has also decided to install OSCAR on his all-electric Outremer catamaran “Aventura Zero” for his next round-the-world voyage, which will follow the same route as the first circumnavigation of the globe carried out 500 years ago by Magellan-Elcano.

The next step

Computer vision, which is already used in cars, will play a central role in the future in the development of maritime navigational aid systems such as autopilots.

In the IMOCA class many solo offshore sailors are eagerly looking forward to developments of OSCAR including an interface with their yacht’s autopilot so that it will automatically steer them away from potential collisions.