5G Maritime is a project intended to track ships in real-time and with pinpoint accuracy and to yield data and images that will complement the information of the port’s current geolocalisation systems (AIS automatic tracking system and radar).
Partners: 5G Barcelona, MWCapital, Port de Barcelona, IBM, Vodafone, Huawei, Fundació i2CAT and the Departament de Polítiques Digitals de la Generalitat de Catalunya
Sector: Industry and mobility
Use cases: Around 9,000 ships per year anchor in the Port of Barcelona. These are vessels of highly diverse natures and sizes and some can measure up to 400 metres in length (about twice the length of a football pitch). Having very accurate information in real-time on their movements and geolocalisation is crucial, not only to optimise the port’s mooring space but also to offer maximum safety both to ships and to port services when manoeuvring.
Description of the technology:
The technological solution comprises the following elements:
- An artificial intelligence model -IBM Maximo Visual Insights- created by IBM and trained in IBM Cloud to recognise ships, their bows and their sterns.
- Two sets of Huawei high-performance cameras and 5G terminals located in the port. These capture the entry of ships in real-time.
- Ultra-fast, low-latency communications provided by Vodafone’s commercial 5G network. These transmit images to the server, where the AI model is run on the images received, which it recognises and interprets.
The artificial intelligence model is distributed to a server located in the port’s control tower using IBM edge computing technologies – IBM Edge Application. A geolocalisation algorithm then translates the pixels from the images into geographical coordinates of latitude and longitude. These geolocalisation data are lastly integrated with the Port’s other systems. The Port of Barcelona therefore obtains both more accurate and real-time information on the location of ships.
Main solution or advance offered by technology:
The technological solution offers bow and stern geolocalisation and high-accuracy indication of ship movement, thus facilitating remote navigation assistance. It will provide ships’ pilots with accurate information of value for the operations of bringing vessels into the port and mooring them, such as the location of the different ships navigating the docks of the Port of Barcelona, or the course and even the speed of their own ship. This is all based on video analysis from 5G cameras installed throughout the port compound.
Status: Finished
