The Singapore Polytechnic’s (SP) Centre of Excellence in Maritime Safety (CEMS) recently developed an Advanced Navigation Research Simulator (ANRS), in collaboration with Singapore Maritime Academy and a software company. The ship navigation simulator, a ship crew trainer, was inaugrated at the 11th Singapore Maritime Institute forum in Singapore over the weekend.

Dubbed as probably the first such stimulator in South-East Asia, the ANRS comes equipped with a a full mission ship bridge and a traffic service system that stimulates real-at-sea conditions, so that the trainees receive training even before stepping on to water! The ANRS combines stimulated training with artificial intelligence (AI) so that it can deepdive into the data collected by sensors such as glasses that track users’ eye movement and headbands that register electrical brain activity. Users’ audio quality – such as a stammer – and pulse rate during a simulated crisis would be recorded as well, giving trainers a better idea of their readiness. 

The Singapore Maritime Academy, the Centre of Excellence in Maritime Safety, and software firm feel that such trainings will help reduce the number of maritime incidents caused by human error. The ANRS also analyses the trainee's audio feed and pulse rate under crisis. The Singapore Maritime Academy, the Centre of Excellence in Maritime Safety, and software firm expect that improved training programmes would result, reducing the number of maritime incidents caused by human error. The Academy has insisted that ANRS will only enhance the trainers' ability to produce better maritime staff, not take over their expertise.

The Senior Minister of State for Transport revealed that they've funded the Singapore Maritime Institute with $80 million fund to conduct research and innovation in the maritime sector.

In a statement, the Chief Executive of MPA, said, “Innovation and digitalisation are the key areas for Maritime Singapore to sharpen our competitive edge. We recognise that some companies need help to kick-start their digitalisation journey. With this in mind, we have formed the Circle of Digital InnOvators (CDO) network to champion the adoption of technology and innovation. We will also roll out the Sea Transport Industry Digital Plan to help SMEs in their digitalisation journey. We hope that through such efforts, we can bring the maritime sector to a new level.”