Shone

An AI crewmate for merchant ships. Shone collects data from every system on board and watches the sea around the vessel, day and night. Its algorithms read raw video to detect targets up to 10 nautical miles away: a lookout that never needs a coffee break. Shone also adapts each route to the weather to burn less fuel, which matters in an industry responsible for nearly 3% of the world’s CO2 emissions and 13% of its sulphur oxide emissions.

A captain can’t spend every hour on the bridge, yet stays responsible for the ship at all times. The challenge was to let them and their officers keep a sharp sense of the surroundings and of any danger from anywhere on board, even from their cabin. That meant fitting a great deal of complex information on a rather small iPad screen. We took the codes of traditional navigation instruments and blended them with patterns from the digital world and touch gestures.

It also meant keeping cognitive load low. What truly deserves attention had to come first, and what is less important or less urgent had to fade into the background, because at sea a wrong decision or a late reaction can be disastrous.

The tablet lays the ship over satellite imagery, radar, nautical charts or weather, with speed, heading and engine figures always in view. It is just as useful on the bridge: during port manoeuvres, the onboard cameras extend what the pilot can see. On shore, a fleet map and an events dashboard follow every ship and every alarm.