2024
NavigAI-tor
Route optimisation for kite-assisted container ships, scoring paths against wind, waves and currents. First place at the Austrian National AI Championship and winner of the AI for Green Award.
The problem
A container ship under kite assistance does not want the shortest route, it wants the one where the wind does the most work. Which route that is depends on wave height, current and weather along every leg, and all of those keep changing while the ship is still sailing.
The approach
We built a full-stack application that pulls in wind, wave and current data and scores candidate routes on the fuel a kite assisted vessel would actually burn along each one, instead of on distance.
A Python service does the routing and the environmental modelling. A Next.js frontend draws the candidate routes and the trade-offs between them.
The outcome
First place at the Austrian National AI Championship (BWKI 2024), plus the AI for Green Award for the best solution to an environmental problem. It also placed on the podium at the Moonshot Challenge 2024.