Shipboard Visual Event Detection Bandwidth Reduction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems face challenges in transmitting visual data and related events from ships to shore over limited satellite bandwidth, requiring efficient data reduction and prioritization to ensure continuous visibility and safety monitoring without losing critical information.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that employs visual event detection, processing, and queuing to reduce bandwidth requirements, allowing continuous communication of significant shipboard activities and status through a reduced-bandwidth channel, with user-configurable priorities and graphical user interfaces for land-based managers to review and synthesize information effectively.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If raw video data is transmitted from ship to shore, then complete visual information is provided, but bandwidth requirements become prohibitively high
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential visual event data from complete video streams, identifying and transmitting only significant events (safety incidents, operational anomalies, etc.) rather than all visual information. This extraction approach maintains information quality for critical events while dramatically reducing overall data transmission volume.
Solution Approach 2:
The visual monitoring system segments continuous video data into discrete visual events based on predefined criteria and significance levels. By dividing the continuous data stream into meaningful segments (events vs. normal operations), the system transmits only the necessary segments, reducing bandwidth requirements while preserving important information.
2Quantity of substance
If visual event detection and processing is implemented, then bandwidth requirements are reduced, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary visual event detection and filtering on the ship before transmission, pre-processing video data to identify and flag significant events. This preliminary action reduces the burden on shore-based systems and ensures that only processed, relevant data needs to be transmitted and further analyzed, balancing onboard processing complexity with overall system efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary visual event detection system that sits between the video cameras and the transmission channel. This intermediary layer automatically analyzes video content, identifies significant events, and prepares data for transmission, reducing the complexity burden on both ship and shore systems by distributing processing responsibilities.
3Loss of information
If all visual data is stored and transmitted, then complete analysis is possible, but storage and processing resources are overwhelmed
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies different quality levels of data processing and transmission to different types of visual information. Critical safety events receive high-priority, complete data transmission with minimal compression, while routine operations use lower bandwidth transmission. This local quality approach ensures analysis completeness for important events while optimizing overall processing efficiency.
Data Source
AI summary
This invention provides a system and method that employs reduction in bandwidth and the amount of data stored, along with queuing of data, so that the significant and/or relevant shipboard visual information is detected and communicated continuously from the ship (or other remote vehicle/location) to shore without loss of useful/high-priority information and within the available bandwidth of that typical, available satellite link. The system and method supports remote configuration and management from shore to the ship over the same communications channel but in the reverse direction. The system and method further facilitates the logical summarization of continuous visibility into shipboard activities, shipboard behavior, and shipboard status so that a land/shore-based manager/reviewer/auditor can review, comprehend and synthesize such information, at a glance, using a land-based user interface/dashboard, related to events that have recently transpired on the sailing commercial merchant vessel without the need to review hours/days/weeks of multiple channels of video.