Prediction of a ship's arrival time at the dock.

Abstract

A method for predicting the arrival time of a ship at berth, comprising the following steps: - collecting position information transmitted by a ship en route to a port, 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, the ship's arrival time in the port waiting area, using computing means located outside the ship; - predicting on the network, from numerous present and past positions of ships in the port waiting area, the start time of a transit of the ship to the port, from the port waiting area, using computing means located outside the ship; - predicting on the network, from numerous present and past transit times of ships between the port waiting area and the port quays, the ship's arrival time at a port quay.by means of computing located outside the ship, - communicate the ship's arrival time at the port quay (ET) to the ship's unloading equipment via the telecommunications network; - adjust the speed of the unloading equipment to meet the ship's arrival time at the port quay.

Description

Title of the invention: Prediction of a ship's arrival time at the quay.

[0001] The invention relates to the field of maritime navigation in general and more particularly to the field of predicting a ship's arrival time at the quay or ETB.

[0002] In the art prior to the present application, the time of arrival of a ship in a port, at the quay, is an important concept in logistics. All the players in a maritime and land supply chain are interested in the art prior to the present application, in having a reliable prediction for the time of arrival of a ship at the quay of a port (or "ETB" for "Estimated Time of Berthing" in English).

[0003] However, such a prediction for a fleet of ships in transit to a port area dedicated to each of them for unloading, applies to a phenomenon that is highly variable in a random manner from the point of view of the port, the ships arriving there in a highly inconsistent manner between them and a reliable forecast or prediction is thus a difficult problem.

[0004] Ports therefore try 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 requiring human negotiations is unusable for an automatic prediction of an ETB.

[0005] Furthermore, in the prior art, each vessel has a unique navigation aid beacon called AIS, in other words "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 vessel or a satellite. The message from the vessel's TAIS contains several pieces of information including a unique identifier for the vessel, the vessel'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 vessel's destination port. This ETA is also referred to in the present application as "ETAais", understood as the vessel's own ETA, transmitted by this vessel via its AIS beacon. This "ETA" (for "Estimated Time of Arrival" in English) is in other words data that the vessel owns, that it transmits and that can therefore be changed unilaterally by the vessel itself.

[0006] In practice, the ETAais is an indication that apparently cannot be used by an ETB prediction system, this data being of human origin and of variable error range, and may in particular not be updated by the crew of a ship. and above all being calculated by the crew without knowledge of the time spent in the waiting area and the transit time between the waiting area of ​​the port of destination and a quay in this port, for unloading the ship.

[0007] Consequently, in the prior art, the ETA cannot be used in any way to produce an ETB. This results in a problem of port congestion at different levels (in the waiting area, at the quay, etc.), which is well known and treated in the prior art as a random phenomenon and very difficult to predict or predict.

[0008] This problem causes irreducible logistical difficulties, which for ports result in, in particular, periods of immobilization or slow movement for ships in the waiting area, leading to excess fuel consumption and greater pollution for boats parked in the port's waiting area or unavailability of quays for larger tonnage ships such as container ships.

[0009] Predicting the arrival time of a ship at the quay for maritime navigation is therefore ultimately a difficult problem for the prior art.

[0010] 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 and past data of a set of ships bound for a port and numerous present or past navigation conditions.

[0011] It is therefore possible in the prior art to predict an ETA more reliably than the ETA emitted by the ship itself. But this data is no more usable for an ETB calculation than the ETA emitted by the ship.

[0012] In this context, the present application relates to a method for predicting a ship's arrival time at the quay, which comprises the following steps:

[0013] - collecting position information transmitted by a ship en route to a port, via a maritime telecommunications network;

[0014] - predict on the network, from the collected information and numerous positions present and past of ships en route to the port, a time of arrival of the ship in the port waiting area, by means of calculation located outside the ship;

[0015] - predict on the network, from many present and past positions of ships, in the port waiting area, a start time of a transit of the ship to the port, from the port waiting area, by means of calculation located outside the ship;

[0016] - predict on the network, from numerous present and past transit times of ships between the port waiting area and the port quays, a time of arrival of the ship at a port quay, by means of calculation located outside the ship;

[0017] - communicate the time of arrival of the ship at the port quay, to means of taking in loading of a ship's cargo, via the telecommunications network;

[0018] - mobilize the means to take charge of the ship's cargo, on time arrival of the ship at the port quay.

[0019] In variants of the method:

[0020] - the telecommunications network includes an AIS network.

[0021] - the telecommunications network comprises an S-AIS network.

[0022] - the calculation means are arranged in the port.

[0023] - the computing means are arranged on a platform at sea.

[0024] - the calculation means are arranged on a ship other than said ship.

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

[0026] - communication to the ship's unloading means of the arrival time of the ship at the port quay, is made via a mobile phone network.

[0027] The invention will be better understood in connection with the list of figures below in which:

[0028] [Fig-1]: illustrates a ship en route to a quay in a port, receiving, by way of satellite transmission, an ET (estimated time) which is an ETB or time of arrival of the ship at the port quay. The ship is a container ship, however the invention is applicable to any type of ship. Any means of receiving the ETB on the ship, 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.

[0029] The invention will also be better understood in light of the description of embodiments, which are in no way limiting, detailed below.

[0030] 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 time of arrival (ET) which is a predicted ETB for the ship, i.e. a time of arrival at a quay in the port, predicted for the ship.

[0031] Such a receiver receives the ETB and displays it to the pilot in command, or sends it to an autopilot of the ship.

[0032] For an autopilot using an ETB value to adjust the speed, it will be possible to enter the ETB received in the AIS beacon, as ETAais or ETA transmitted by the vessel.

[0033] Such a transmission via AIS (or equivalently via any network available to the vessel for transmission), of an ETB instead of or in replacement of an ETA, allows a port that calculates the ETB to be able to effectively influence the speeds of ships on their trajectories, towards the port's transit waiting area and towards a port quay, provided that the port has the means to reliably determine an ETB.

[0034] The method for calculating the ETB 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.

[0035] 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 the ship's transit from the port waiting area to a port quay suitable for the ship's tonnage, by means of the ship's waiting position in the port area and by means of numerous present and past positions of ships in this port area.

[0036] Then, once the transit time is known as well as the arrival quay, it will be possible to calculate, by means of numerous present and past transit times between the position of the ship in the waiting area and the quay, the arrival time of the ship at the port quay, with improved reliability compared to the prior art.

[0037] Finally, by communicating the ETB to the ship, it will also be possible on the one hand to allow the ship to navigate by adapting its speed to respect the ETB received by the ship and on the other hand by retransmitting this ETB in place of its ETA transmitted via the AIS beacon to easily allow the port or the entity producing the ETB prediction to verify that the ship has indeed received the ETB from the port, the replaced and retransmitted ETA playing the role or exercising the new function, of an acknowledgment of receipt of the ETB transmitted to the ship.

[0038] All methods available in the prior art for predicting an ETA or time of arrival in the waiting area of ​​a ship, in particular from its AIS or S-AIS data or from technical characteristics of the ship available for calculation, may be used in an equivalent manner.

[0039] 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 may thus be evaluated from a time of arrival in the waiting area or predicted ETA, to which a predicted duration of immobilization will be added.

[0040] Any method available in the prior art for predicting a transit time to a port quay may be used. The arrival time at a quay and the number of this quay may thus be predicted, based on more reliable and mutually dependent ETA, immobilization and transit data, which improves the reliability of the prediction of the final ETB.

[0041] This property may encourage ships to take into account the transmitted ETB and to use it instead of the AIS ETA that they transmit, thereby sharing a consistent reference for their AIS ETAs and making the ETB tend towards the ATA (actual time of arrival of the ship at a quay in the port).

[0042] An advantage of the method according to the present application, which extends to all its embodiments, is to be able to also predict more reliably a quay number of the port at which the ship will be moored and will have to be unloaded, which opens the possibility of synchronizing means of unloading a ship at this arrival quay (cranes, etc.) by adapting their unloading speed or means of land transport (trucks, trains, etc.) capable of unloading the ship, to adapt their speed or their trajectory towards the actual arrival quay of the ship, by connecting them all to a telecommunications network available at the quay in the port or available in the means of land transport, such as, preferably, a mobile telephone network.

[0043] Another advantage of this embodiment, as in all the embodiments of the present application, is that its application does not require any exchange of RTA ("requested time of arrival") between the ship and the port, notably simplifying the necessary communications and thereby eliminating causes of unpredictable fluctuations which are detrimental to a reliable prediction of an ETB in the prior art.

[0044] The transmission of the ETB to the ship can be made by any means of telecommunications, in reception, in particular satellite such as S-AIS or AIS network on VHF band to allow the use of this ETB in transmission from the ship as ETA, in particular via the AIS network.

[0045] In a second embodiment, the device of the first mode can be generalized to any fleet of boats or ships en route to the same port. In this case, it is observed that their ETBs approach their ATA in the same way as with a single ship and that improved navigation is therefore obtained in terms of just-in-time for a fleet of ships, which allows a port to organize the transit traffic of ships upon their arrival in the waiting area, up to a quay, in a fluid manner.

[0046] A port can particularly from this point of view influence the fluidity of maritime traffic towards the waiting area of ​​this port, then to the quay by influencing the speeds of boats on the high seas, from the congestion histories concerning it, which it is able to measure precisely and therefore to promote the quality of the data used to train artificial intelligence algorithms on large sets of good quality data.

[0047] In all its embodiments, the invention thus makes it possible to approach "just in time" navigation to the quay. Ports or container users or any owner of goods transported in bulk or owners of transported vehicles can thus take into account reliable and therefore more representative ETBs. ATA's recommendations to improve the logistics of the goods concerned, also obtaining early a quay number associated with the ship for its unloading in the port.

[0048] The absence of the obligation to install another network than the AIS network to receive the ETBs calculated outside the ships and retransmit them, is an important advantage in terms of installation on existing ships, although other networks than FAIS can be used to transmit, transport and receive the ETBs, i.e. to communicate them, in the sense of a successful result of transmitting data from one point to another.

[0049] From a technical point of view, it is in particular possible to replace the ETA calculated on the boat in an AIS frame by an ETB 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 the quay than the waiting area of ​​conventional ETAs, improving logistics for the ship.

[0050] 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 ETB calculated outside the boat to the boat via the AIS network, with a minimum of overload of the AIS network.

[0051] 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 ETB, close to a real ATA.

[0052] 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 FAIS, in particular a network using satellites, if it is available on a container ship is within the teaching of the invention.

[0053] The calculation of ETB 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. To validate an ETB prediction, it may be compared retrospectively over a period before arrival, to the ATA value but certified models available in the prior art may also be used.

[0054] 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.

[0055] For shipowners, ports and the entire port or maritime logistics ecosystem, the invention ultimately provides a tool enabling operations “Just in Time” (JIT) maritime logistics.

[0056] The invention is susceptible to industrial application in the field of maritime logistics for “just in time” navigation.

[0057] 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 of module (change of speed itself) or of direction of this vector (change of trajectory).

[0058] In all the embodiments of the present application, again, it will be possible with the invention to obtain an adaptation of a speed of unloading means (crane, etc.), i.e. the speed of unloading of a ship on the ship's arrival quay or the speed of land transport flows (trucks, trains, etc.), i.e. the speed of movement of these flows, towards the right quays of a port to have, in all cases, sufficient unloading means at a good time (control of the speed and trajectory of these means) on these quays.

[0059] For this purpose, the time of arrival of the ship at the correct quay will be communicated on any type of telecommunications network to which the unloading means have access and the speed of the unloading means will be adapted to converge at the time of arrival of the ship towards this correct quay.

[0060] In particular, a type of telecommunications network suitable for all the modes of the invention and comprising the synchronization, via the adaptation of their speed, of the unloading means, in their function described above, will be a mobile telephone network.

[0061] The present application is adapted to the "just in time" or consistent use of means for unloading (such as cranes) a cargo from a ship (such as containers) onto a dock of the ship and to the "just in time" use of means for loading the cargo from the dock into means for taking over the cargo on land to another destination (such as trucks).

[0062] The teaching of the present application therefore allows the land-based unloading or handling means to arrive just in time at the quay, in sufficient number and of the right sizing category (such as a type and number of cranes or a type and number of trucks).

[0063] The teaching of the present application also allows optimal use of the unloading means of the different quays of a port.

Claims

Claims

1. Method for predicting a time of arrival at the quay of a ship characterized in that it comprises the following steps: - collecting position information transmitted by a ship en route to a port, 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, a time of arrival of the ship in the port waiting area, by calculation means arranged outside the ship; - predicting on the network, from numerous present and past positions of ships, in the port waiting area, a time of start of a transit of the ship to the port, from the port waiting area, by calculation means arranged outside the ship;- predict on the network, from numerous present and past transit times of ships between the port waiting area and the port quays, a time of arrival of the ship at a port quay, by means of calculation arranged outside the ship; - communicate the time of arrival of the ship at the port quay, to means of taking charge of a cargo of the ship, via the telecommunications network; - mobilize the means of taking charge of the cargo of the ship, at the time of arrival of the ship at the port quay.;

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

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

4. Method according to claim 1 in which the computing means are arranged in the port.

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

6. Method according to claim 1 in which the calculation means are arranged on a ship other than said ship.

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

8. Method according to claim 1 in which the communication to the unloading means of the ship, of the time of arrival of the ship at the port quay, is made via a mobile telephone network.

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