Fujitsu Says New "Highly Accurate" Fuel Efficiency Tech Could Save 5% on Bunker Costs

Fujitsu Laboratories' new technology estimates fuel efficiency to a "highly accurate" margin of error

Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. (Fujitsu Laboratories) Tuesday announced that, through a joint research project with Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, it has developed technology capable of estimating vessel fuel efficiency, speed, and other performance measures in actual sea conditions with a "highly accurate" margin of error of under 5 percent, and thus has the potential to make bunker savings of the same amount.

Previously, Fujitsu Laboratories says estimates of ship performance had "a large margin of error."

"If maritime operators have an accurate grasp on the effects of meteorological and hydrographic conditions on a ship's fuel performance, they can determine whether it is better, in terms of fuel efficiency, to take the shortest route, or to take a longer route to avoid the wind and waves," explains Fujitsu Laboratories.

"However, as existing ship performance estimation technologies rely on experiments with model ships in tanks of water, or on physics model simulations, they could not take into account the complicated interactions of the wind, waves, and ocean currents with ship conditions. This problem led to large margins of error in predictions."

The new technology is said estimate vessel performance at sea through the use of Fujitsu Laboratories' high-dimensional statistical analysis technology, which utilises "a massive" amount of data gathered from the ship while underway.

The gathered data is said to include sensor data of meteorological and hydrographic conditions, such as wind, waves, and ocean currents, ship engine log data, speed, and spatial data.

Fujitsu Laboratories says that through the combination of Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology's weather routing simulator with its study's result, it demonstrated it could improve fuel efficiency by about 5 percent from previous results, with ships that navigate the shortest shipping routes.

"With this technology, it is possible to accurately estimate a ship's performance in actual sea conditions, which previously had a large margin of error, enabling evaluation of ship performance, design feedback, and significant improvements in fuel efficiency when used in ship navigation," said Fujitsu Laboratories.

The company says that it plans on continuing its efforts to improve its estimation accuracy through more operational trials focused on a number of ship types and routes, with the intention of adding the offering to Fujitsu's location information cloud service, FUJITSU Intelligent Society Solution SPATIOWL, in the 2016 fiscal year.

Last year, Reuters market analyst John Kemp predicted that plunging bunker prices would likely interfere with the push for fuel efficiency if continued into the long-term.