Belgian company Seafar reports the successful completion of a test voyage in the North Sea using its remote navigation technology, operated directly from its remote operations centre in Antwerp.
The trial was conducted with and under the supervision of Belgium’s FOD Mobiliteit en Vervoer / SPF Mobilité et Transports. The vessel Fast Sim, operated in partnership with Fast Lines Belgium, was remotely controlled throughout the voyage.
Seafar manages and operates unmanned and crew-reduced vessels for ship owners and shipping companies via its Shore Control Centre, where licensed captains oversee navigation supported by artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.
The system combines onboard autonomy for navigation with remote pilotage assistance during manoeuvres to enable safe vessel operations.
Seafar’s AI and sensor fusion technologies integrate data from LiDAR, radar, and camera inputs to identify and classify obstacles and predict vessel behaviour. The company’s research aims to further develop these capabilities through world modelling and object learning, allowing autonomous vessels to share environmental data and improve collective navigation performance.
