Groke Technologies Unveils Situation Awareness Tool for Fleet Managers

Groke Technologies, the Finnish technology company behind the Groke Pro Situational Awareness System, has introduced a new solution designed to give ship managers shoreside an unparalleled view of the surrounding area of all the vessels in their fleet.

Groke Fleet gives ship management teams more detailed information on which to better evaluate, enhance and control the navigational safety and efficiency of their vessels.

Unlike traditional fleet awareness solutions, which tend to be based only on periodically updated AIS data, Groke Fleet captures positional data from onboard cameras, sensors and navigational systems to provide a continuous clear image of each vessels' operational status, day or night.

Using machine vision and cloud technology, Groke Fleet provides an accurate overview of the ships, generating invaluable insights and historical route information combined with high resolution imagery from the ships’ Groke Pro cameras and sensors.

While fleet managers can use Groke Fleet to follow the safety and efficiency of their vessels in congested or difficult seaways, the system really comes into its own in the event of a collision or similar incident, says Juha Rokka, CEO, Groke Technologies.

“We truly believe that Groke Pro and Groke Fleet allow ship managers to significantly raise maritime safety to a higher level, reducing the number of navigational incidents globally,” he says.

“We see a future where situational awareness data will play a central role in ship and fleet management, but our technology also provides irrefutable evidence for accident investigators and insurers. It delivers greater transparency.”

If there's an incident or a near miss, the system automatically captures an image of the situation and creates a report, so reporting is no longer dependent on those onboard. Fleet managers can playback the route leading up to the event to see what actually happened. “This is invaluable when there are several parties involved,” says Rokka.

Groke Pro’s unique blending feature combines images from day and thermal imaging cameras to provide a clear view of the vessel surroundings even during night-time operations or other low-visibility situations such as fog, heavy rain or highly reflective situations.

Mikko Mäkelä-Vaitilo, Groke Fleet Product Manager says this makes such big difference to fleet management. “It’s no longer just an AIS-type map view, but you can overlay high-resolution camera imagery. It picks up all the objects detected by the computer vision system, including non-AIS vessels.”

The Turku-based company has also incorporated risk analysis functionality, which provides an intuitive risk compass, closest point of approach alarms and relative velocity tracking. Whenever, the system triggers an event, Groke Pro captures it, and relays the information shoreside to Groke Fleet users. This ensures ship managers shoreside can see the incident unfold in almost real-time.

“Where there is a requirement for visual evidence, there is no room for second guessing,” says Mäkelä-Vaitilo. “When a watchkeeper is looking outside and looking at our Groke Pro user interface, the same information is now available shoreside, via an easy-to-read visual display. Fleet operators now have access to detailed situational analytics, including positioning, environmental conditions an operational status, surpassing the granularity of information provided by conventional the AIS system.”