March 31, 2023

New features of Groke Pro

Groke Pro product was released in May 2022. Since then, tens of Groke Pro units have been shipped to customers and the development team at Groke has not stood still and has been working hard and actively listened to customer feedback. Now we proudly present our new features increasing the safety of operations and to visualize risk situations.

First, on top of the detection and tracking capabilities of Groke Pro, we have built functionalities to utilize detection data for determining the risks of situations. You can enable and disable the risk analysis features directly from the new radial menu.

Radial menu for risk analysis features

Caution Zone Alarms

Caution zone alarms are based purely on distance from the own vessel. Vessels inside or just entering the caution zone are differentiated by yellow color. The caution zone also filters detections: Objects detected by only AIS outside the caution zone are not shown on the Augmented Reality view and on the other hand, Objects detected outside the caution zone only by camera  are not shown on the map view. This filtering applies still even if the caution zone alarms are toggled off. User can set the caution zone between 0.1 to 6 nautical miles.

Caution Zone

CPA Alarms

The system calculates values for DCPA and TCPA. There are three levels of criticality classes: Inform, Warning and Danger. When CPA alarms are toggled on, any object with a critical CPA level will cause an alarm and indicate a hazardous vessel with separate coloring by grey, yellow and red respectively.

CPA Points

CPA points is a feature that simply forecasts the locations of the user’s own vessel and detected vessels at the TCPA based on the current courses. It also displays the value of DCPA between the points. This feature effectively conveys not just how close the CPA situation will be, but also where it will happen according to the current course and speed.

CPA Points

Risk Compass

Risk Compass feature is a visualization of risk levels in each direction from the own vessel. It displays an arc in front of the vessel with red coloring in the directions that have a high risk level. Dark red signifies high risk, and lighter red indicates lower risk. No red coloring means that the direction is not risky at all. The risk analysis is based on CPA and TCPA calculations, taking into account the current speed of the user's vessel.

Risk Compass

Relative Velocity Tracking

Another approach to determine the risk levels of other vessels is checking their relative speed. This functionality can be used by toggling it on for each specific vessel. Groke Pro then visualizes on the map the direction of the other vessel relative to the user's vessel. The vector length is up to the CPA, so the vector ends where the Closest Point of that particular vessel is related to the user’s own vessel. Furthermore, the vector location tells also which side the vessel is passing the user’s own vessel.

Relative Velocity Tracking

Map Ruler

In earlier versions of Groke Pro, there was already a possibility to measure and track the distance between the user’s own vessel and detected vessels. Now, this ruler functionality has been expanded to handle more use cases. Users can freely select any two points on the map and measure the distance between them. A new feature is also the ability to measure and track the distances between two detected vessels.

Map Ruler

Zoom

Many of our customers have eagerly tried to zoom in on the camera view to examine greater details of surrounding vessels. Previously, this was not possible, but now it is! With the tablet, you can freely zoom in on the AR-view by pinching with your fingers. For the fixed display, the mouse scroll wheel can be used for this purpose. While the number of pixels in the image is not increased by zooming, it does make it more comfortable for the eye to view smaller and more distant objects. 

Screen Recordings

A feature that has been highly requested from customers is the recording functionality. This new software version allows users to record videos of the UI onboard and view them later. Additionally, the recording function saves the raw data of the situation and transfers it to Groke premises, so all data from the situation is stored and can be examined later on if needed.

Take a look at our new video of the new features