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TI cameras help tankers to navigate safely through treacherous icy waters

Thermal Imaging Cameras enter the Maritime world

I was quite surprised when I stumbled across an article on the internet that showed a TI camera used to support the radar system on an oil tanker. The article was titled: TI cameras help tankers to navigate safely through treacherous icy waters.I have to admit that I always thought about high temperature spot detection when TI technology was mentioned, not cold spots at all. I also always thought that radar is used since decades to ensure safe navigation for ships and tankers, so it must be reliable.

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It seems to me that the pressure coming from the growing public concern about marine pollution is forcing ship companies to look around and find new technologies which make navigation even more secure. Especially for oil tankers where an accident can end up quickly in a catastrophe.

A thing that came to my mind immediatly about ship catastrophes was Titanic. In 1912 ships had to navigate without radar, just relying on the lookouts. Radar actuallly entered ships in the 1930s so unfortunetly a bit too late for the people on Titanic, but for sure helped to avoid similar disasters for future generations. With having TI technology now, and combine this with the traditional radar systems seems to me that after about 80 years engineers found the next step for safe navigation - by adopting a technology that was initially not planned for this purpose.

For those who think now about traditional hand helt TI cameras I recommend to have a closer look at the attached document, which is actually the case study I mentioned at the beginning of this article. Maybe this stimulates some further ideas at your side? If so, feel free to share them on DesignSpark.

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