MOL & Bearing team up to bring Artificial Intelligence to the maritime shipping industry

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) announced on Tuesday an expansion of their partnership that began in 2019. The relationship was originally established with the goal of improving shipping efficiencies within the maritime industry. Through various trials and intensive discussions concerning ship modelling, a range of products, including a newly announced Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered Smart Routing Engine, has been developed by combining MOL’s maritime expertise and Bearing’s AI technology infrastructure. This routing engine automatically analyses multiple potential routes for a given voyage and recommends prudent, efficient routing through use of optimal main engine output and propeller RPM profiles.

Bearing is a Silicon Valley-based AI technology start-up that focuses on streamlining shipping operations. At the core of Bearing’s technology is highly-accurate ship performance models built off a diverse set of real-world data points. These AI-powered models with some historical voyage data for certain vessels such as vessel speed, trim, main engine operation, weather and sea condition allow Bearing to predict metrics like fuel consumption with state-of-the-art accuracy even without vessels’ design parameters.

Bearing’s desire to partner with MOL arose from MOL’s reputation as a technology leader in the shipping industry that understands the transformative potential of AI. MOL appreciates Bearing’s profound AI expertise and background in building scalable AI technology products. These mutual recognitions lead to an agreement for the expansion of the existing partnership.

The global shipping industry has been challenged to further enhance energy efficiency and develop measures to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships in a manner that will phase them out this century. The MOL Group is one of the world’s leading multimodal transport entities that is committed to achieving sustainable “Net Zero GHG Emissions” through collective efforts by 2030.

MOL, at its highest organisational levels, continuously monitors the condition of its fleet to ensure optimum operational efficiency and prudent safe navigation by combining the technologies of Bearing as well as other existing and new solutions. MOL accepts its social obligation to take innovative steps to help solve environmental issues such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, air pollution and biodiversity impediments, emphasised a release.