LogiSea
Maritime fleet operations
Agents that render verdicts over a satellite link that drops, with no hardware added to the vessel.
Three vessels in installation.
Maritime
A link that is narrow and drops, and software that has to reach a verdict anyway.
The same document exists on board, at the technical office, with the class society and in the inbox of whoever handled it last. None of the four is authoritative, and the inspection is on Thursday.
The line that closes it
Agents in operations — An agent that reaches a verdict is a different engineering problem from an agent that offers suggestions.
Why the design is fixed before a line is written
A vessel is reachable when the weather and the footprint allow it, at a bandwidth that rules out anything chatty, and the moment a verdict is needed is not a moment anyone can choose. Nobody on board restarts a service, and nobody puts a box on twenty hulls to find out whether the software was worth it.
Which fixes the design before a line is written: nothing new on the vessel, the link that is already there, and a right answer while the link is down rather than an apology when it returns.
What it made us build
What this industry made us build is a system that stays right while it is alone. A ship taught us that the moment an answer is needed is never a moment anyone gets to choose, so state is held where the decision happens and reconciled afterwards. Nothing we build now assumes the source is reachable.
The system behind this page
Forty-five minutes. Bring two or three real documents — the ones that do not fit the pattern. We will run them on screen and tell you what the work would be.