Reduction of the time a ship spends in a waiting area or at the dock.

Abstract

A method for predicting, for a ship en route to a port, the time of stay in a port waiting area, comprising the following steps: - collecting position information transmitted by the ship, via a maritime telecommunications network; - predicting on the network, from the collected information and numerous present and past positions of ships en route to the port waiting area, a time of entry of the ship into the port waiting area, by means of computing equipment located outside the ship; - predicting on the network, from numerous present and past positions of ships in the port waiting area, a time of departure of the ship from the port waiting area, by means of computing equipment located outside the ship; - predicting a time of stay of the ship in the waiting area (TA) by the difference between the time of departure of the ship from the waiting area and the time of entry of the ship into the waiting area;- communicate the stay time to the ship via a telecommunications network; - adjust the ship's speed to reduce the communicated stay time.

Description

Title of the invention: Reducing the time spent by a ship in the waiting area or at the quayside.

[0001] The invention relates to the field of maritime navigation in general and more particularly to the field of reducing the duration of a ship's stay in the waiting area of ​​a port.

[0002] In the art prior to the present application, the time of exit of a ship from a waiting area of ​​a port is important in terms of logistics.

[0003] All the players in a maritime and land supply chain are indeed interested in the art prior to the present application, in benefiting from a minimum loss of time in the waiting area and therefore from a time of exit of a ship from the waiting area of ​​a port, to transit towards the port (or abbreviated as "ETT" for "Estimated Time to Transit / of Transitting" in English), as close as possible to the time of entry of the ship into the waiting area.

[0004] However, such a prediction for a fleet of vessels in the waiting area of ​​a port, stopped at anchor or at low speed near the port awaiting pilotage to an unloading area or transit to the port, applies to a phenomenon that is essentially randomly variable from the point of view of the port, the vessels arriving there in a manner that is essentially inconsistent with each other and a reliable forecast or prediction leading to a reduction in the waiting in the area is thus a difficult problem.

[0005] Ports are therefore trying to request a time of arrival of a ship in the port waiting area (RTA for "Requested Time Of Arrival" in English) under penalty of a fine for the ships, but this method is subject to acceptance by the ships and their owners, is of limited geographical application and is not suitable for automated or general application.

[0006] Furthermore, in the prior art, each ship has a unique navigation aid beacon called AIS, otherwise known as “Automatic Identification System”. Each beacon regularly transmits a message that can be picked up by anyone with a receiving antenna on land, on board a ship or by a satellite (S-AIS variant of TAIS). The message from the ship’s FAIS contains several pieces of information including a unique identifier for the ship, the ship’s position, its heading, its speed, the port of departure and arrival, as well as its ETA which is an estimated time of arrival in the waiting area of ​​the ship’s destination port. This ETA is also referred to in the present application as “ETAais”, understood as FETA specific to the ship, transmitted by this ship via its AIS beacon. This “ETA” (for “Estimated Time of Arrival” in English) is in other words, data which the ship owns, which it issues and which can therefore be changed unilaterally by the ship itself.

[0007] In practice, the ETA is an indication deemed not to be usable by an automatic system, this data being of human origin and with a variable error range, and in particular not being able to be updated by the crew of a ship.

[0008] Consequently, in the prior art, ETA is not used to reduce the time a ship spends in the waiting area of ​​a port.

[0009] Furthermore, calculation methods using artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML), known from the prior art, make it possible to calculate, in advance of the arrival of a ship, an ETA for the ship. These methods require computing centers, generally on land or in any case outside the ships, to be able to mobilize a large computing power and a high-bandwidth data network, in particular to update the ETA predictions in near real time and to take into account the present or past data of a set of ships bound for a port and numerous present or past navigation conditions.

[0010] It is therefore possible in the prior art to predict an ETA for a ship, via calculation means located or arranged outside the ship, more reliably than the ETA emitted by the ship itself via its AIS or S-AIS beacon.

[0011] In this context, the invention relates to a method for predicting, for a ship en route to a port, a stay time in a waiting area of ​​the port, comprising the following steps:

[0012] - collect position information transmitted by the ship, via a television network maritime communications;

[0013] - predict on the network, from the information collected and from numerous positions present and past of ships en route to the port waiting area, one time of entry of the ship into the port waiting area, by means of calculation located outside the ship;

[0014] - predict on the network, from many present and past positions of ships, in the port waiting area, a time of exit of the ship from the port waiting area, by means of calculation located outside the ship;

[0015] - predicting a stay time of the ship in the waiting area by the difference between the time the vessel left the waiting area and the time the vessel entered the waiting area;

[0016] - communicate the stay time to the ship, via a telecommunications network;

[0017] - adapt the speed of the ship to reduce the communicated stay time.

[0018] In variants:

[0019] - the port waiting area is a waiting area at sea, before the transit of ships to a port quay and the entry time is an ETA calculated by the calculation means.

[0020] - the port waiting area is a port quay, the entry time is an ETB calculated by the means of calculation and the exit time is an ETD calculated by the means of calculation.

[0021] - the telecommunications network includes an AIS network.

[0022] - the telecommunications network comprises an S-AIS network.

[0023] - the calculation means are arranged in the port.

[0024] - the computing means are arranged on a platform at sea.

[0025] - the computing means are arranged on a terrestrial platform.

[0026] - the calculation means are arranged on a ship other than said ship.

[0027] - the exit time is communicated to the vessel via the AIS network.

[0028] - the exit time is communicated to the ship via the S-AIS network.

[0029] - the method comprises the following additional step: using the residence time predicted in the waiting area of ​​the port to calculate, by the calculation means, a time of arrival of said ship in another waiting area of ​​another port.

[0030] The invention will be better understood in connection with the list of figures below in which:

[0031] [Fig.l]: illustrates a ship en route to a waiting area of ​​a port, receiving by satellite transmission, an ET (estimated time or "Estimated Time" in English) which is an ETT (estimated time of start of transit of the ship to the port or "Estimated Time to Transit" in English), i.e. a predicted time of exit of the ship from the waiting area of ​​the port. The ship is a container ship, the invention is however applicable to any type of ship. Any means of reception on the boat of ETT, in particular by 5G or VHF or by AIS or S-AIS network (AIS by satellite) or internet, can be used by the ship, depending on its transmission equipment or more generally maritime telecommunications.

[0032] The invention will also be better understood in light of the description of embodiments, which are in no way limiting, detailed below.

[0033] In a first embodiment, with reference to [Fig.l] for the elements in parentheses below and also present in this figure, a ship or boat is provided with a receiver for an estimated arrival time (ET) which is an ETT (“Estimated Time to Transit”) predicted for the ship, i.e. a start time of the transit or transfer of this ship, from the waiting area to the port, predicted for the ship.

[0034] Such a receiver receives the ETT and either displays it to the pilot in command or sends it to an autopilot on the ship.

[0035] For an autopilot using an ETT value to adjust the speed, it will be possible to enter the ETT received in the AIS beacon, as ETAais or ETA transmitted by the vessel, i.e. by replacing FETA calculated by the crew with the ETT received.

[0036] In a preferred mode, the reception of the ETT is integrated into the AIS or S-AIS beacon of the ship, which allows only one protocol or network to be used to carry out this first mode to: receive the ETT, replace the ETA with the ETT and retransmit the replaced ETA.

[0037] Such a transmission via AIS (or equivalently via any network available to the ship for transmission), of an ETT instead of or in replacement of an ETA and its taking into account by the transmitting ship allows a port which calculates the ETT to be able to effectively influence the speeds of the ships on their trajectories, towards the transit waiting area of ​​the port and towards a quay of the port, provided that the port has the means to determine an ETT reliably.

[0038] Furthermore, it is easy to detect for a port which receives AIS data from a ship to verify the correct reception by the ship of an ETT transmitted, the re-transmission of this via the ETA, playing the role or exercising the function, of an acknowledgment of receipt for the port.

[0039] The method for calculating the ETT of the present application then consists of first using the prediction of an arrival time in the waiting area, in a manner known from the prior art, by means of the present coordinates of the ship and numerous present and past positions of ships bound for the port, the destination towards the port being able in particular to be obtained from the AIS data transmitted by the ships.

[0040] Then from this prediction, it will be possible, depending on or starting from the expected time of arrival in the waiting area, to predict the start time of transit (exit time) of the ship from the waiting area of ​​the port, to a quay in the port adapted to the tonnage of the ship, by means of the position of the ship in the waiting area and by means of numerous present and past positions of ships in this port area.

[0041] Thus, by communicating the ETT to the ship, it will be possible on the one hand to allow the ship to navigate by adapting its speed to respect the ETT received by the ship and on the other hand by retransmitting this ETT in place of its ETA transmitted via the AIS beacon to easily allow the port or the entity producing the ETT prediction to verify that the ship has indeed received the ETT from the port.

[0042] All methods available in the prior art for independently calculating or predicting an ETA or time of arrival in the waiting area of ​​a vessel, in particular from its AIS or S-AIS data or from technical characteristics of the vessel available for calculation, may be used in an equivalent manner.

[0043] Any method available in the prior art for predicting a duration of immobilization in the waiting area in view of the predicted ETA may be used. The start time of transit or time of exit from the waiting area may thus be evaluated from a time of arrival in the waiting area or reliable ETA, to which a predicted duration of immobilization will be added as a function of the predicted ETA, that is to say in combination with it, which makes the prediction of an ETT more reliable.

[0044] This reliability property of the ETT could encourage ships to take into account this ETT to spend only a minimum of time in the waiting area and to use it in place of the AIS ETA that they issue, thereby sharing a consistent reference for their AIS ETAs and benefiting from a reduction in the stay in the waiting area. This will ultimately limit noise, sulfur emissions or pollution in the port waiting area, caused by the vessel(s) present there.

[0045] An advantage of this embodiment, as in all the embodiments of the present application, is that its application does not require an exchange of RTA ("requested time of arrival") between the ship and the port, significantly simplifying the necessary communications and thereby eliminating causes of unpredictable fluctuations that are detrimental to a reliable prediction of an ETT.

[0046] The transmission of TETT to the ship can be made by any means of telecommunication communications, in reception, in particular satellite such as S-AIS or AIS network on VHF band to allow the use of this ETT in transmission from the ship as ETA, in particular via the AIS network.

[0047] In a second embodiment, the device of the first mode can be generalized to any fleet of ships or boats en route to the same port. In this case, there is a reduction in the time spent in the waiting area as with a single ship and therefore improved navigation is obtained in terms of just-in-time for a fleet of ships, which allows a port to organize the exit of ships outside the waiting area, in a smoother manner.

[0048] A port can therefore advantageously influence the fluidity of maritime traffic towards the waiting area of ​​this port to make it disappear or reduce it, by influencing the speeds of boats on the high seas, based on the congestion histories concerning it, which it is able to measure precisely and on verified ETA calculation methods; the use of this quality data promotes the training of artificial intelligence algorithms.

[0049] In all its embodiments, the invention thus makes it possible to approach “just in time” navigation to the quay, by reducing the time spent immobilized in the waiting area. Ports can thus streamline port traffic via the waiting area and make it possible to best preserve the marine flora and fauna in the waiting area by minimizing the number of ships immobilized in this area.

[0050] The absence of the obligation to install another network than the AIS network to receive the ETTs calculated outside the ships and retransmit them, is an important advantage in terms of installation on existing ships, although other networks than TAIS can be used to transmit, transport and receive the ETTs, i.e. to communicate them, in the sense of a successful result of transmitting data from one point to another.

[0051] From a technical point of view, it is notably possible to replace the calculated ETA on the boat in an AIS frame by an ETT calculated outside the boat, these quantities being of the same binary type on 20 bits, without modification of the AIS standard, which facilitates the compatibility of the implementation of the solution of the invention for existing applications. It is thus possible to add an AIS ETA field whose time reference is closer to an ATA than the waiting area of ​​classic ETAs, improving logistics for the ship.

[0052] This implementation advantage is also obtained by returning only a small amount of information to the boats (for example, 20 bits for an ETA in NMEA format of a type 5 AIS message) and thus remaining compatible with low bit rates, such as for example a 9600 baud link to send the ETT calculated outside the boat to the boat via the AIS network, with minimal overload of the AIS network.

[0053] In all the modes described, the invention therefore requires little or no modification of the AIS standard or the AIS network used, to benefit from a predicted ETT, close to an actual ETT.

[0054] The use of the AIS network or beacons is for these reasons a preferred mode for the invention but the use of any higher speed communications network than TAIS, in particular a network using satellites and if it is available on a container ship is within the teaching of the invention.

[0055] The calculation of ETT or its steps may use without inconvenience any technique present in the prior art and related to artificial intelligence, difficult to implement, in practice, on each ship of a fleet but implemented outside of a ship on platforms in a port, at sea or on land. To select an ETT calculation, the conformity of the prediction to real values ​​may be evaluated retrospectively but certified models available in the prior art may also be used.

[0056] The invention is intended to be applied quickly and easily to the existing fleet of vessels, in particular those equipped with AIS beacons or networks using satellites.

[0057] For shipowners, ports and the entire port or maritime logistics ecosystem, the invention ultimately provides a tool facilitating “Just in Time” (or “JIT”) maritime logistics operations that are closer to reality.

[0058] The invention is susceptible to industrial application in the field of maritime logistics for “just in time” navigation.

[0059] For the purposes of the present application, the words “adapt a speed” apply to a speed understood as a vector, the adaptation being able to concern a change in module or direction of this vector.

[0060] For the purposes of this application:

[0061] ETA to a port designates for a ship an arrival time in an area waiting at sea from the port;

[0062] ETB to a port means for a ship a time of arrival at a quay in the port;

[0063] ETD from a port means for a ship a time of departure from a quay in the port.

[0064] With these definitions, it is seen that the present application can be used from of a reliable prediction of an ETA calculated by computing means outside a ship to predict times of entry of this ship (arrival times) and exit of this ship (departure times) from any waiting area around a port or a quay of the port, which opens the way to predict an ETB and an ETD for this ship bound for another waiting area of ​​another port and thus to improve the navigation prediction for this ship making a voyage comprising different stops at different ports. To this end, the methods of the present application will be applied in cascade to the different journeys between the stops from the quay of the beginning of the voyage of the first trip, to the quay of the end of the voyage of the last trip of the ship, through varied and variable waiting areas of the ports of departure, stopover and arrival of the voyage, without losing the consistency of the prediction throughout the voyage and therefore improving the reliability of this prediction.

Claims

Claims

1. Method for predicting, for a ship en route to a port, a stay time in a waiting area of ​​the port, comprising the following steps: - collecting position information transmitted by the ship, via a maritime telecommunications network; - predicting on the network, from the collected information and numerous present and past positions of ships en route to the waiting area of ​​the port, a time of entry of the ship into the waiting area of ​​the port, by calculation means arranged outside the ship; - predicting on the network, from numerous present and past positions of ships, in the waiting area of ​​the port, a time of exit of the ship from the waiting area of ​​the port, by calculation means arranged outside the ship; - predicting a stay time of the ship in the waiting area (ET) by the difference between the time of exit of the ship in the waiting area and the time of entry of the ship into the waiting area;- communicate the dwell time to the ship via a telecommunications network; - adapt the speed of the ship to reduce the communicated dwell time.;

2. Method according to claim 1 in which the port waiting area is a waiting area at sea, before transit of the ships to a port quay and the entry time is an ETA calculated by the calculation means.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the port waiting area is a quay of the port, the entry time is an ETB calculated by the calculation means and the exit time is an ETD calculated by the calculation means.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the telecommunications network comprises an AIS network.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the telecommunications network comprises an S-AIS network.

6. A method according to claim 1 wherein the computing means are arranged in the port.

7. Method according to claim 1 in which the computing means are arranged on an offshore platform.

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12. Method according to claim 1 in which the calculation means are arranged on a terrestrial platform. Method according to claim 1 in which the calculation means are arranged on a ship other than said ship. A method according to claim 2 wherein the exit time is communicated to the vessel via the AIS network. Method according to claim 2 wherein the exit time is communicated to the vessel via the S-AIS network. A method according to any preceding claim comprising the further step of: using the predicted dwell time in the waiting area of ​​the port to calculate, by the calculating means, an arrival time of said vessel in another waiting area of ​​another port.

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