Vessel detection

Ships detected, measured and classified on SAR and optical imagery by a machine learning model, and matched against AIS to expose dark vessels.

Plio

Frozen test splits: 687 images for detection, 2,131 crops for classification.

12 vessel types, in three groups

01
Defence and naval
Warships at sea and in port, naval base activity and fleet movements over time.
02
Dark vessels
Ships with AIS switched off or spoofed: detected in the image, absent or elsewhere in AIS.
03
Migration and search and rescue
Small boats at sea, for coast guard, border and rescue authorities.
04
Tankers and sanctions
Tankers at anchor, ship-to-ship transfers and loitering in high-risk waters.
05
Fisheries
Fishing vessels inside protected and closed areas.
06
Ports and shipyards
Vessels in port, occupied berths and docks, hulls under construction.

Field	Content
Position and time	Coordinates of the hull at the moment of acquisition
Outline	Hull outline as a polygon
Dimensions	Length and beam, in metres
Heading	Heading, and speed where a wake is visible
Type	One of 12 types in three groups: military, large civilian, small civilian
Scores	Detection and classification confidence
AIS	Matched MMSI and name, or flagged as dark
Image chip	The vessel cut from the scene, for review

01
Collection
SAR through cloud and at night; optical for identification
02
Detection
The model finds and outlines each hull
03
Classification
Length, heading and type per vessel
04
AIS matching
Paired with AIS at image time; unmatched vessels flagged as dark
05
Review
Analyst corrections retrain the models

Task	Imagery	Use
Wide-area search	SAR, 1–3 m	Large sea areas, day and night, through cloud
Small boats	SAR or optical, 25–50 cm	Coastal waters and approaches
Identification	Optical, 30–50 cm	Type, superstructure and deck features
Ports and bases	Optical and SAR, 25–50 cm	Vessels at berth, repeat counts
Emitters	RF	Radars and communications, geolocated

01
Single collection
One area and date: detections, vessel table and report.
02
Monitoring
Ports, straits or sea areas on a fixed schedule, with alerts on dark vessels.
03
Integration
Detections delivered into your maritime picture or command system, by API or files.