Insights

How does an operator actually get from advisory tools to supervised automation? This final insight in the series sets out the staged path, strengthening data integrity, embedding optimisation in everyday operations, running pilots, scaling with governance, navigating barriers, and tracking progress against a maturity model that points the industry towards a clearer direction of travel.

Fuel is one of shipping’s biggest cost lines, and consistency is rapidly becoming the new currency of compliance under CII and the EU ETS. This insight looks at why automation’s commercial case rests on consistent execution rather than new strategies, and why market readiness is uneven, with strong interest but limited familiarity across the fleet. Regardless of the importance of technical feasibility and safety considerations in supervised propulsion automation, its success

Supervised automation of propulsion crosses into territory that the industry has traditionally wanted to see surveyed, certified and audited. This insight looks at the safety and assurance considerations, the existing onboard systems supervised automation already builds on, and how regulatory frameworks are evolving to support its safe introduction at scale.

Conversations about maritime automation often jump straight to fully autonomous ships, a destination still many years away. This insight unpacks why that framing is misleading, what supervised, human-in-the-loop automation actually means in practice, and why human oversight remains the centre of the picture even as systems take on more of the routine work.

crew delivers results from optimisation tools

Even with credible models and reliable tools, the gap between recommendation and reality can be wide. This insight explores how shifting weather, currents, schedule pressures and operational priorities push vessels off optimum, and why even small, repeated deviations can swallow a meaningful portion of the predicted efficiency gains.

Because the power required to move a ship rises with the cube of its speed, even tiny adjustments in propulsion can produce outsized fuel savings. This insight explains why speed is the single most powerful operational lever available to operators, and why the gap between recommendation and execution is where most of those gains are still being lost.

If advisory tools have taken the industry as far as they can, what comes next? This insight introduces supervised speed automation as a pragmatic next step, one that keeps the crew as the final decision-maker while shifting repetitive propulsion adjustments to a system that can sustain them across long voyages.

Around 70% of vessels still rely on noon reporting, providing only a single daily snapshot of how a ship is performing. Even where high-frequency sensor data is available, miscalibration, missing values and weak integration plague the chain. This insight examines why robust data is the prerequisite for any meaningful optimisation, and why companies who skip this step risk building automation on unstable foundations.

Slow steaming, weather routing and fuel curve analysis have become standard practice across the global fleet, and as a result, the most easily attainable efficiency gains are largely captured. This insight explains why advisory-only tools are now hitting diminishing returns, and why the next stage of efficiency depends less on better calculations and more on consistent execution.

Closing the Execution Gap with Smarter Propulsion Control The maritime industry has made major advances in voyage optimisation, yet a persistent challenge remains: turning recommendations into consistent onboard execution. Many operators have access to sophisticated routing, speed planning, and performance tools, but real-world conditions, crew workload, and operational pressures often prevent vessels from maintaining optimal performance throughout a voyage. Why Optimisation

We surveyed maritime operators across the industry and uncovered the fact that optimisation is widely adopted at the planning level, but only 21% believe it is well understood. This insight shares the survey’s key findings, including which factors operators identify as the biggest constraint on optimisation performance, and why automation is gaining ground despite limited familiarity with it.

Why optimised voyages don't always deliver: the Maritime Execution Gap

13th of June 2024: DeepSea Technologies, the leading maritime AI company and part of the Nabtesco Group, has received Type Approval from leading classification society DNV for their latest product, DeepSea HyperPilot, which automatically and precisely controls the change of speeds across a voyage to achieve fuel savings and empower captains and crews. This is DNV’s first type approval of a system that provides automatic speed adjustment to a propulsion control system. An easi

Ask yourself one question: do you understand your vessels’ performance accurately enough to really optimise anything? Shipping is still a world of ‘low definition’. According to our survey: Most shipping companies understand their vessels’ behaviour only “quite well” Most shipping companies have only “somewhat accurate” fuel consumption predictions Most shipping companies do not/cannot reassess voyage plans regularly, despite the constantly changing reality There is still a l

From bunker savings to regulatory compliance and chartering competitiveness, vessel performance now sits at the centre of commercial strategy. But traditional performance monitoring methods offer only snapshots of reality. Machine Learning enables a continuous, data-driven view of vessel efficiency, unlocking smarter decisions across the entire lifecycle.

Optimisation can drive a huge, rapid impact in shipping companies. Most operators can decrease fuel consumption by at least 10% through operational optimisation alone. But this can't be done without a hyper-accurate understanding of how each vessel behaves. The key to successful optimisation Following a transformative 6-month project with Eastern Pacific Shipping (EPS) we're pleased to announce a new 'gold standard' for vessel behaviour modelling, having delivered weekly fue

13th of June 2024: DeepSea Technologies, the leading maritime AI company and part of the Nabtesco Group, has received Type Approval from leading classification society DNV for their latest product, DeepSea HyperPilot, which automatically and precisely controls the change of speeds across a voyage to achieve fuel savings and empower captains and crews. This is DNV’s first type approval of a system that provides automatic speed adjustment to a propulsion control system. An easi

Eastern Pacific Shipping (EPS) has entered into an agreement with DeepSea Technologies to implement a comprehensive fleet-wide deployment of DeepSea’s pioneering Cassandra Performance Monitoring platform. This strategic partnership will deepen EPS’ existing commitment to exploring digital solutions and comes after an extensive trial process on the accuracy of DeepSea’s high-frequency AI performance models. By leveraging DeepSea’s revolutionary Cassandra system, EPS will monit

DeepSea Technologies and G2 Ocean collaborate with SINTEF, backed by theEEA and Norway Grants 2014 – 2021 in the frame of the Business Innovation Greece Programme, to explore and develop an energy management AI solution for vessel operators using AIS and noon-report data to lower barriers to adoption. 29th of April 2024, Athens: DeepSea Technologies, the award-winning Al-led maritime technology company and energy efficiency experts, today announced the completion of a project