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AIS Prediction API: AIS made Real time

By 26/05/2022May 27th, 2022Technology
The challenge with AIS

AIS (Automatic Identification System) is similar to airplane transponders as it communicates, amongst other things, the location of ships, their direction of travel, destination and ship-size. It has been an important cornerstone in the maritime world for several decades. It is one of the tools captains have at their disposal. It is however well known that AIS updates are irregular and inaccurate. For example: ships that are sailing may update their location only every 30s or slower. 

Making AIS continuous

Captain AI has sought to address this issue by the development of an AIS based prediction stack that allows users to see ships and see their movement. Changing AIS blips to a continuous function by means of filtering and prediction techniques allowing the users to see the situation as it is right now. Though still limited where corners are concerned, our solution provides a significant improvement over standard AIS. Running in the cloud, it is dynamically scaling  based on requests and it is easily accessible through the use of a well documented API.

Image: in grey the original received AIS signal, in red the predicted position of the vessel in real time

Customer use case: Waterkaarten App

Our AIS prediction API is integrated in the Waterkaarten app, a popular app in The Netherlands used by owners of pleasure boats. Not only can the users see other vessels using AIS displayed on the app, but they can also transmit their own location using GPS, thereby increasing their visibility to other users of the Waterkaarten app and increasing the safety on the waterways. Read more about the app here.