FrontM backed by Innovate UK to pave the way for AI enabled edge applications for maritime
FrontM is on a mission to be the EDGE-intelligent app marketplace where the world goes to connect, inform and care for remote teams and customers. The innovation focuses on overcoming digital poverty in remote and isolated environments, such as the Blue Economy. The World Bank defines the blue economy as the “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs while preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem.”
FrontM’s initial use cases include the maritime commercial shipping market, particularly transforming shore-ship team collaboration, automation of workflows, crew safety and welfare.
FrontM is proud to be recognised by Innovate UK and receiving a grant to study the feasibility of integration of Edge AI enablement technology from Hammer Of The Gods (HOT-G). HOT-G is a Palo Alto, California based deep-tech startup, building the infrastructure and developer experience tools for observability, security and monitoring for edge computing. This integration accelerates FrontM’s distributed software infrastructure and paves the way for innovative AI-enabled edge applications in its app-marketplace.
A market research report, written during 2021 by consultancy company Thetius and sponsored by the Inmarsat Research Programme, estimated that by 2030 the digital maritime industry will be worth $345 billion, up from a previous forecast of $279 billion. It reported an explosion in the use of IoT and digital tools in maritime due to massive growth in consumer demand for e-commerce and the use of online booking platforms for shipping freight.
Centralising data in the cloud is a big challenge in maritime due to a combination of factors – the bandwidth constraints in transporting the entire data set from ship to shore, the proliferation of IoT and the generation of more data from each sensor than what is required. While enabling inference from data at the edge can address some of the challenges, deploying AI on constrained devices is today prohibitively complex and expensive compared to developing and deploying AI models on the cloud.
HOT-G’s embedded machine learning orchestration tools combined with FrontM’s programmable app framework seek to address these technological challenges by taking advantage of FrontM’s tools to accelerate maritime digitalisation across a broad range of applications ranging from safety, remote assistance, surveys, predictive analytics and crew welfare.
Enquiries: Anne-Marie Barclay, anne-marie@frontm.com
About Innovate UK
Innovate UK is the UK’s innovation agency. It works with people, companies and partner
organisations to find and drive the science and technology innovations that will grow the UK
economy. For further information visit innovateuk.gov.uk