Anchoring your boat is a bit like parking your car. Sometimes it can be tight and a little difficult. While many cars and trucks are equipped with technology to assist or completely handle that chore, more commercial and recreational vessels are now docking on their own.

A new partnership between marine giant Brunswick Corporation and tech company Apex.AI aims to gradually enhance docking and other self-driving capabilities through advanced technology similar to what powers today's software-defined vehicles. .

Brunswick, which owns 60 marine brands including Boston Whaler and Sea Ray, is in the midst of a long-term plan to increase the autonomous capabilities of its vessels through a strategy called ACES. Autonomy, connectivity, electrification and shared access.

The new partnership with Apex will make it much easier to integrate Brunswick's autonomous systems with Apex's middleware, increasing functionality and performance as the company pursues its ACES strategy.

“Currently, there are systems designed for automatic docking, but if you want to create a more basic system for a pontoon boat and you want a simpler sensor, maybe just a mono camera instead of a stereo camera, or What if the opposite is true? We want to develop more technical systems to manipulate these autonomous functions,” Brandon Ferriman, Brunswick and ADAS program director, said in an interview. “We need something more forward-looking, so being able to replace sensors using that robust middleware gives us flexibility.”

Apex CEO Jan Becker said the company's middleware acts as a bridge between incoming data and the software running the system, simultaneously improving performance and “preventing software from crashing in a safe and reliable manner.” “We aim to achieve safety and security without sacrificing safety and security.” requirements. “

Autonomy, or automatic docking, has been a feature for several years, and the two terms are essentially synonymous, Ferriman said. However, integrating Apex's middleware into the Brunswick system will enhance the autonomous docking capabilities, he said.

“When you enter the marina, it monitors everything around you and starts creating a map on the screen in front of you, using AI elements,” Ferriman explained. “When you come to a location often, it renders faster because you have a memory of the location and only look for differences, like a boat was there yesterday and isn't here today.” Additional monitoring may be required.”

While recreational boaters have eased the hassle of docking their vessels, commercial boaters have been embracing self-driving features, including self-driving, for some time.

In 2021, a tugboat equipped by Boston-based Sea Machines Robotics completed a more than 1,000-mile voyage from Hamburg, Germany, to Denmark, navigating autonomously more than 96% of the time.

Both Ferriman and Becker liken advances in maritime autonomous technology to the automotive industry's transition to more computerized, or software-defined, vehicles.

Indeed, Ferriman, who previously worked at auto suppliers TRW and ZF, and Becker, who heads Apex, which is increasingly using middleware in the auto industry, says that experience will help in the transition to software-defined containers. .

“In terms of developing a system like this and bringing it to market, it's essentially no different than a driver assistance system in a car,” Becker said. “If you have a software-defined foundation and the right hardware on your boat, there is ample opportunity to implement more software-defined systems in the future.”

“Ocean space has more advanced propulsion systems and autonomous capabilities,” Ferriman added. “The wave of electrification is starting here as well, and battery management systems and software are all going to play a part in that.”

Commercial launch of Brunswick-branded ships with automatic docking is scheduled for 2025, Ferriman said, noting that the company also plans to market the technology to other ship manufacturers.

Ferriman said the public will have the opportunity to see the self-docking system in action during a series of demonstrations prior to launch.

Ferriman said autonomous docking is just the beginning of a journey to explore where the technology is headed for the recreational maritime industry, declaring: Can we build more autonomy into the capabilities that represent next-generation systems? ”



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