The system has been designed by scientists from the University of Madrid for core CC, a developer of surveillance systems in the aeronautical and maritime. The first prototype will be used shortly in Cape Verde (Africa). There have been deployed two types of sensors: a set of radars and a number of monitoring stations AIS (Automatic Identification System), which allow ships to communicate their position and other data relevant to its location and characteristics. These two types of sensors provide additional information that can be merged to become better informed of what’s happening in the maritime and coastal area of interest and that’s what scientists have succeeded in Applied Artificial Intelligence Group (GIAA) UC3M of developers of this project, “Information Fusion in Maritime Traffic.”

The result of this research, presented last July at the International Conference on Information Fusion, held in Edinburgh (Scotland) has been the creation of a data fusion software that allows a better maritime surveillance, integrating a simultaneous capabilities of radar and AIS tracking stations deployed. The goal: to ensure the safety of the area by controlling the number of ships traveling on a certain shipping which, in turn, is input and output of a commercial port. “To do so – says one of the investigators, Jesus Garcia, Department of Computer Science UC3M – required a complete, accurate and current, similar to that provided to air traffic controllers, all ships that found in the coverage area in order to properly manage the traffic and detect abnormalities as early as possible. “

Scientists have developed a prototype integrated into the enterprise system, after passing the validation tests in order to run in real time with the data supplied with the sensors. 2000 is capable of controlling objectives identified between large ships and small ships, with capacity to process data from up to 10 sensors and provide output with a period of refreshment of a second. “The boats have to be located 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, regardless of failures of sensors or other mechanisms that are intermediate in some way, so try this system is to ensure that it can be, “said another GIAA researchers working on the project from the campus of the UC3M Colmer, Jose Luis Guerrero. “This way – still – get those ships will never lose its position to avoid collision or may have any problem in the management of information on the dynamics of movement of those ships.”

This prototype paves the way for further analysis and development, as more data and information of its operation in real conditions, say the scientists, who are already investigating how to apply this information fusion technology to the fields of robotics, for unmanned vehicle navigation, machine vision systems or ambient intelligence. “In all these lines – said Professor Jesus Garcia – is needed technology infrastructure and information fusion to combine the available sensor data and contextual information in each stage.”

Bibliography:

Title: Robust Sensor Fusion in Maritime Surveillance Real Scenarios

Authors: Jesus Garcia, Jose Luis Guerrero, Luis and Jose M. Alvaro Molina.

Publication: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Information Fusion
Edinburgh, UK: July 26-29, 2010.

ISBN: 978-0-9824438-1-1

More information:

Scientific Information Office of the University Carlos III of Madrid

Source: UC3M