Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has announced the launch of satellite technology that can track dark ships around the world, which turn off their automatic identification systems (AIS) to hide their tracks, and can also help combat illegal fishing.
Traditionally, the identification of hidden vessels has relied on high-resolution optical images downloaded from Earth observation cameras. However, due to limitations in data transmission capacity and storage, these images cannot always be transferred to computers on Earth. Even if they could be transferred, these massive amounts of data would need to be manually sorted before the time-consuming and labor-intensive process of matching each satellite image of a dark ship with AIS details. This process can lead to delays in identifying perpetrators and initiating interventions.
To solve this problem, MHI has developed a device called AIRIS (Artificial Intelligence Retraining in Space) system. Like other Earth observation equipment, AIRIS can take images of surface objects, but unlike other satellite technologies, it can also simultaneously process visual data using artificial intelligence (AI). AIRIS consists of an Earth observation camera and an AI-equipped data processor.
When the camera scans the Earth’s surface, instead of automatically transmitting all the data back to the earth for processing, AIRIS detects target objects (e.g., hidden ships) through its own AI and selects and transmits data only for the area where the target object is located.
For example, a ship can be identified by its AIS system as it departs from a harbor, but the ship then turns off its AIS while underway. In this case, AIRIS can track the ship through photographs taken by its Earth observation cameras and detect it through AI. AIRIS can also be updated directly in orbit and can receive AI models “retrained” on the ground to update and fine-tune the AI.
AIRIS has been selected as one of the demonstration themes for the “Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration Program” implemented by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and will be launched in FY2025 on board JAXA’s demonstration satellite RAISE-4 for testing.
MHI said the deployment of AIRIS will mark a significant advancement in the field of maritime surveillance, enhancing the ability to track ships of unknown whereabouts and mitigate illegal activities on the high seas. The technology will initially be used in the field of economic security to track ships on the world’s oceans. In the future, the detection technology could also be extended to other objects such as aircraft or vehicles.