AI Pilot-Assist Technology Has Arrived on the Mississippi River

The maritime autonomy developer Mythos AI has installed a pilot-assist system designed for inland waterway navigation on a working towboat operated by Southern Devall. The system will help with collision-avoidance on the busy Mississippi River, and it is the first deployment of its kind on the waterway.

"This technology represents a step change in how we think about safety and operational control on the river," said Sam Lewis, Vice President of Sustainability at Southern Devall. "Our top priority is keeping our crews, vessels, and cargo safe in increasingly complex navigation environments. Mythos AI’s system gives us a new level of foresight — and we believe it will increase safety gains and fuel savings."

The system's current configuration supports specific safety needs for towboat pilots, like spotting floating logs, identifying nearby vessels, and determining when a buoy or navigation aid might be displaced from its proper location. It also calculates approximate stopping distances for the vessel based on current river conditions, with alerts to the operator. On the fuel-economy side, it logs consumption and propulsion data, and recommends the best performance throttle settings for each specific towboat. In deep-sea shipping, these cost savings have been a driving force behind adoption of advanced fuel-tracking software.

Southern Devall is among the larger operators on the Intracoastal Waterway and the Mississippi, with 70 towboats in operation. Based on the success of the Mythos AI system, it may install more units across the fleet.

The Mississippi is notoriously variable, with shifting shoals and changing water levels, and Southern Devall COO Bob Thomas says that Mythos' system does a good job keeping up. "The Mythos AI system shows real promise in its ability to learn the navigational constraints of our routes and vessels and assist with real-time decision-making," he said in a statement.