Wilson Sons develops artificial intelligence to manage its tugboats

Wilson Sons Tugs, a port support company of the Wilson Sons Group, has developed an artificial intelligence technology for tugboat operation that guarantees optimal maneuver, with greater safety, more efficiency and lower operating costs.  The system is already running at ports in Rio de Janeiro (RJ), Vitória (ES) and Santos (SP) and assists in the company’s allocation of tugboats for maneuvers.

With the initiative, the company expects to reduce operating costs by maximizing the use of its tugs and reducing fuel consumption. “We perform about 60,000 maneuvers per year and, with the use of artificial intelligence, it is possible to make the decision in a more agile way, and to move the appropriate tugboat at the ideal moment”, highlights Elisio Dourado, the company’s regional manager.

To carry out the planning of the maneuver, the artificial intelligence developed by Wilson Sons Tugs analyzes 14 different parameters, such as geolocation of the different variables involved (tugs, customer’s vessel, terminal), characteristics of the vessel, fuel consumption efficiency of the tugs, regulation of each port, among other items.

The system is fed back with information on the operations carried out. Hence, via machine learning, it is able to optimize its own operation. The software records the pre-decision and decision scenarios. And the algorithm learns from the solutions. The more information, the better the system.

According to the regional manager Yuri Fedoruk, the goal is to implement artificial intelligence in all 25 locations where the company operates within a year. According to him, artificial intelligence can be used in several applications in the company, with the potential to be extended to other users, generating new revenues.

Future

The project began to be developed in September 2018 at Tuglab, the company’s innovation laboratory. The site brings together a multidisciplinary team of specialists who participated in the entire design of the algorithm capable of meeting the needs of the tugboat operation.

The system was fed with more than 350,000 maneuvers that had their history stored in the database used by the company’s Tug Operations Center (COR). Inaugurated in 2012, COR is responsible for monitoring the fleet of 75 tugs, distributed from north to south of the country. From these inputs, artificial intelligence was enabled to make decisions guided by the data, without the need for previously programmed instructions.

“Artificial intelligence is here to improve and support the work carried out by COR. Operators will be freed up from repetitive and procedural actions to dedicate themselves to the most complex activities of our operation, which will bring more value to our company ”, says Wilson Sons Rebocadores director of operations, Marcio Castro.

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