CMA CGM Links Up with AI Startup for Navigation Safety

CMA CGM is collaborating with a San Francisco-based startup, Shone, to embed artificial intelligence on board its ships.

CMA CGM is allowing Shone to take onboard data and analyze it at the startup’s headquarters with the aim of facilitating ship navigation by providing crews with decision support on maritime safety and piloting. As part of a security and anti-collision alert system, Shone fuses data from multiple sensors (radar, camera, AIS, etc.) to increase detection accuracy, thus preventing potential collisions, taking into account COLREGs. 

Shone was founded by three French engineers last year. The company aims to introduce artificial intelligence, already present in cars, on board ships. 

The collaboration is in line with the Group's strategy of digital transformation implemented by Rodolphe Saadé, Chairman and CEO of the CMA CGM Group. 

Last year, CMA CGM Group opened its Navigation and Port Operations Center in APL’s corporate headquarters in Singapore. Designed to be the Group’s third navigation command center to its combined fleet of more than 500 container vessels, the facility leverages the latest navigation assistance tools and technologies to track and examine wide-ranging nautical, meteorological and geographic information in real-time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

The center in Singapore is dedicated to serving the Asian time zone; the Group’s two other centers – located in CMA CGM’s corporate headquarters in Marseille, France, and its regional office in Miami in the United States – take charge of the European and Americas time zones respectively. Based on live analytics of the vessels’ operating speeds, ocean currents, weather forecasts and high traffic areas, each center’s team of experts are empowered to assess, anticipate and mitigate any navigation-related risks to the Group’s vessel operations. 

The Group's 494 vessels call more than 420 ports in the world on five continents. In 2017, they carried nearly 19 million TEUs.