Furuno creates AR division

Augmented reality is not yet widely deployed in the maritime environment but plans are under way to develop this technology with the inception of the MEGURI 2040 project in 2020, led by the Nippon Foundation. Recently the project successfully trialled an unmanned containership.

Kazuma Waimatsu, senior executive officer and divisional general manager of the Marine Electronic Products Division at Furuno, explained more about the importance of autonomous shipping.

“The number of ships crossing the world’s oceans is growing every day, and the seas are more crowded than ever,” he said. “The size of ships is also increasing. It is becoming more critical to know the situation around the ship directly from the bridge to improve safety and security during any operation.”

Creating a fully autonomous ship entails three steps, according to Kazuma Waimatsu. Firstly, ‘recognition support’ to scan the surrounding environment, followed by ‘decision support’ which uses this information to make an appropriate decision, and finally ‘ship operational support’ to link the decision to the ship’s operation.

So far, Furuno has successfully created the ENVISION augmented reality navigation tool to accomplish this first. “At Furuno, we have already taken up part of the challenge and created a system to support seafarers’ visual perception during operations using augmented reality technology, which will also be the first step towards the automated ship of the future,” said Kazuma Waimatsu.