Orca AI’s Co-Captain Transforms Ship Navigation

A new onboard system allows ocean-going vessels to share real-time sea condition data, giving crews early warnings and helping them navigate more safely. The system will analyze data related to navigation, vessel behavior, and the environment to give ship crews guidance at sea.

While casualties from ship collisions and groundings have declined, the overall number of maritime incidents are on the rise, up 22 percent in recent years, driven by aging vessels and equipment failures.

Orca AI, a London-based autonomous maritime navigation company, has introduced a software feature called Co-Captain, aiming to reduce those incidents. Co-Captain is an addition to the company’s existing SeaPod real-time decision support system, which bridge officers can use while at sea to navigate better.

Co-Captain provides information about severe weather, including recommendations to specific ships based on their size and shape.Orca AI

“Co-Captain is a network of vessels using Orca to capture events worldwide and share insights. Think of it like the navigation app you use in your car: it tells you about traffic or roadblocks in advance so you can adjust your route,” says Yarden Gross, the CEO and co-founder of Orca AI.

Gross says that Co-Captain frequently collects data from sensors on board vessels and sends it to the cloud to improve ship performance and safety for vessels globally.

Orca AI’s Maritime Solutions

OrcaAI, founded in 2018 by Gross and Dor Raviv, the CTO, began with SeaPod and Fleet View. While SeaPod collects and analyzes data on individual ships, Fleet View gathers that data in the cloud to give fleet managers on shore better visibility into larger operations.

Co-Captain integrates with the existing system to provide proactive insights to improve fleet performance and safety. Today, ship officers rely on tools like radar, the automatic identification system (AIS), and the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) monitor the positions of other vessels and avoid collisions, but much of the work remains manual.

Co-Captain identifies various navigational hazards to a ship’s crew. The crew can also manually tag obstacles or other concerns.Orca AI

Gross described Co-Captain as the next generation of AIS, the network that transmits basic information like a ship’s position, name, and heading over very high frequency (VHF) signals ranging from 30 to 300 megahertz. Unlike AIS, which tracks only a ship’s position, Co-Captain also monitors onboard conditions. For example, if a ship reports a pitch of 3 degrees and a roll of 5 degrees in rough seas, Co-Captain uses that data to anticipate how current conditions will impact nearby ships, adjusted for their size and design. Co-Captain then sends tailored recommendations to those vessels’ crews.

“Every ship acts as a node in a larger network, and each node—the vessel itself—has an onboard AI platform. This platform collects data from multiple sensors in real time,” Gross says. Using cameras and computer vision, the AI model can detect bad weather, low visibility, tall waves, or strong winds, then the platform analyzes the data to provide tailored guidance.

All data is anonymized. Gross says that a ship’s movements, timing, or route can reveal valuable information. “By anonymizing the data, Co-Captain can share critical safety alerts such as GPS interference, severe weather, or high traffic without ever exposing which vessel reported it or where it came from.”

Gross says that Orca AI is working on integrating Co-Captain with more bridge systems, such as Navigational Telex (NAVTEX) and ECDIS, so that relevant alerts and updates are centralized.

The company’s long-term goal is to provide real-time notifications focused on the most important events along a ship’s route, giving captains information they can act on quickly to support safer and more efficient operations. The platform is already in use on over 1,200 vessels.