The Indian shipping industry will be hugely beneficial by adaptation of technologically advanced systems such as drones, machine learning and digital mooring technology in order to be more future ready, Captain Rahul Bhargava, Director Commercial & Operations, Essar Shipping Ltd, recently said at a global industry conference.
“Shipping is not direct business; it is a derived business. Thus if you’re in a derived business and it plays a central role in the global economy, then if the other industries are becoming tech savvy, the shipping industry cannot be left behind. In the last few years, we have seen a quantum jump in the use of technology, storage, e-commerce, and block chain. There is going to be a lot of changes in the future,” Capt. Rahul Bhargava said in his address during Trade Reboot Global Commodity Conference 2020, a virtual conference held across the world.
He said newer technologies such as drones have become very popular and needs to be implemented across the industry and can execute challenging manual tasks with ease.
“There any multiple surveys which a ship needs to participate in these days such as Annual survey, Two and a half yearly survey and a Five yearly survey. The inspectors of these surveys have to go to every nick and corner of the ship, enclosed spaces which are difficult to reach. The drones have a camera attached to them which lets the inspector stand at a convenient and safe place and use the drones to assess the condition of various parts of the vessel such as the steel, structure etc,” Capt Bhargava said.
“This saves a lot of time for the inspector and prevents a safety hazard. In larger vessels such as a VLCC, one needs to inspect every internal corner by ballasting water into the vessel and then take a raft for executing physical inspection. In such a case, pumping out water from the oil tanker is also an issue,” he explained.
He said similar advancements were coming up in digital mooring systems where in mooring ropes are equipped with battery operated sensors which transmits data such as rope tension to the system/tablet in a control room, thus helping increase the longevity of the ropes and prevents accidental breakage of the ropes.
Capt. Bhargava also said implementation of Artificial Intelligence in freight movement will help map movement of ships better and will save manual labour and discourage e-waste of upto 900 emails. Similarly, machine learning has changed the entire concept of maintenance system to preventive maintenance system.
“There are probes which are being inserted in the machinery spaces such as engine and generators. These probes record and analyse the data and lets the users know about the condition of the machinery. This enables the user to know what is happening inside the machinery to avoid the overhauling of engine or machinery at any given time,” he said adding preventive maintenance technology tells the user the exact time some part needs maintenance/change, thereby saving a lot of cost by not following the makers manual, knowing what the current health of the machinery and avoiding any surprise breakdowns.