Ground-Breaking Tech on our Bering 75 Explorer Yacht - Pt.3 (Eps.50)
- [Narrator] Previously on NautiGuys. - We wanted to show you a little bit of the equipment that you are gonna have on the boat. - Is it gonna be this big? - Yeah. - Yeah.
- In case you don't understand what I'm saying, it's heading, it's different- - Thank you. - Than, of course- - Thanks for acknowledging that. - Okay? - Appreciate it. - No problem. So you're on this (mumbles) Huh? - Fast way to talk about the transducer. (laughs)
- These are still prototype units, so this software on here is beta. So if we run into a glitch... (laughs) - We called them and said, "We're coming." They said, "Okay, we're still testing this.
Like this is not out, we are not ready." And we said, "Well, we're coming." So they said, "Okay." - Before we even are able to see anything, we had to sign NDAs. - Yes. - There you go.
- Exactly, exactly. (speaker laughs) So what you guys are seeing is quite special, and no one has seen it yet. - I've seen it, exactly. - Okay, you've seen it. (laughs) - Felt like we needed to get away from that cold Washington State weather and show you guys the real applications. So let's go meet the team. Hey, this is Mike.
Mike is the Florida- - Sport Fishing TV. (chuckles) - Sport Fishing TV. And this is Tim from FURUNO. - Yes. We got a complete new cartography. - It's so intuitive like- - Absolutely. - You don't really need anyone to teach you if you have some basic phone usage.
- Just because something simple doesn't mean it's better. - All right, show us around. - Okay, let's take a look. So we're gonna start- - Let's go. - By hitting the "Let's Go" button. - Let's go.
- Actually two new features, I'm gonna go ahead and turn Risk Visualizer on. - There are so many targets, it's impossible to track everybody all of the time. For that to just jump up, that could save my boat. (yacht honking) (water splashing) - One of the other things we're gonna show you is going to be AI avoidance. And what that does, when it sees a vessel or a buoy or anything that's in your current path that is on your heading line, it will tell you how to steer around it by giving you essentially a virtual route.
- An actual route. - Absolutely. - It will build it for you. - So for instance, what's the draft of your boat, Mike? - Three feet approximately. - Okay. - Give or take. - So for Mike's boat, we could put in a five foot safety depth, okay? It will make sure it does not build a route in five feet or less of water. For you guys who have a yacht, maybe you draw eight feet, maybe you're gonna say, my safety depth is 10 or 12 feet, it will not draw a route in less than whatever you set the safety depth to be.
- So can you hit go on that route, kind of like you- - No, you're just going to follow it. So you're getting a little bit ahead of us, Victoria. - Okay, okay, okay. (speaker laughs) - But don't give away all of our secrets. (laughs)
- I don't know, I'm learning as well. Oh, pill, there's a pill. - Yeah, there's a pill. And that's a non-threat pill because as you saw, it was gray.
- Yeah. - If it's a threat, it's gonna be red every time. - Red, okay. And like what you said, what did you say, zone? - I said in college they told me about those non-threat pills too.
(laughs) An avoidance zone. - Avoidance zone, yeah. - Avoidance zone. That's a good term. - Avoidance zone.
- The point you're getting at is, what's going happen is, we're gonna use that route, we're gonna feed it to the NavPilot, the FURUNO NavPilot, and it will drive you around it. That's the goal of AI avoidance. - Would it take in consideration any moving targets? - It will take in everything into consideration. Like I said, if you try to head to a buoy- - Yeah. - That is sitting there, it is tracking it.
If your heading line is on it, it's gonna build a route for you to get around it. - It's gonna go around it. - It doesn't matter what kind of boating you do, safety is key. - This is absolutely amazing. - And that's what we're
trying to do. So Rico, if you would, just tap on the screen anywhere. - Okay, let's tap here. - Okay, and go to "New Route." Mike hasn't even done this yet.
Okay, see at the bottom, we have two choices, we have manual routing, which is the old way that TZT3 did, right? Let's see, where is our starting point? Oh, it's up here. - Yeah. - So boom, boom, boom. Okay, so that's the way we did an old route on TZT3, right? And you can still do it, it's still there and available, but we also have AI routing.
Okay, so tap again. - Tap here. - And "New Route." - "New Route." - You're gonna have to tap that one. There you go, okay. - Yeah. - Nope, you're good, you were good. - Oh, so it'll switch the manual, - Okay. - But up there,
there's your point. - Yeah. - It doesn't start on the boat because it doesn't know where you wanna build the route. - Got it. - Okay, so what I want you to do is touch- - So the point is the first step of the route.
- Yes, so. - The boat. - Yeah, take that, put it wherever you wanna, say you wanna start from here, put it on the boat. Okay, now tap on the screen somewhere else. Watch what it's doing.
- Get outta here. - There we go. - Get outta here. - You didn't know that. - No. Look at that. - No, we didn't get a chance to show him yet. (laughs) - That's incredible.
That's incredible. If you're not sure of what just happened, we literally created a point. (Tim laughs) - Because Mike is not sure. - Anywhere. (Victoria laughs) - Mike didn't see that yet.
No. - Anywhere on the chart, no matter how congested of an area you're in, which we are in a very congested- - Very congested (chuckles) area. Lot of curves, lot of turns, we don't know where we're going. Of course, we do here in the daylight today, hypothetically you're in an unfamiliar port, you're delivering a boat, you're getting to a new port of call.
So many scenarios, and it simply created an absolutely safe route for us based on not only where we're going, but the parameters that we have preset. It's not gonna take us into shallow water, it's not gonna take us into any risk avoidance areas where we may have potential for collision, okay? So it's calculating and it's doing it instantly. And that's the difference between AI. Right? - Exactly. - It's so much faster than you and I. Boom, just like that.
- Well, it was really nice to be able to blow your mind. - Yeah, that was really cool. (speaker laughs) - Before you guys showed up, we did not get a chance to show like that. - No. - So that was
his first reaction. - That's really cool. - So that is good. - Oh, that was awesome. - Can I manually now manipulate this? - Absolutely. - So for example, like here in... - Yes. - All it's doing is getting you from point A to point B where you want it to be, and then you can still do anything you want.
- It's so cool. - It's not exactly where you want it to be. If it doesn't go under the bridge, right, where you wanna go under. - Yep. - You can still make quick changes like that. - Did you see how certain sections were read? - Mm-hmm. - That's the sections it wants you to personally take a look at to make sure you agree that that's the safest place.
That's why part of it was blue and part of it was red. I wanted you to take a closer look at that because we are in a highly constrained area. - Yep. - So I mean, you're really familiar with the waters. - Yes. - Would you have taken that kinda course? - Exactly.
I mean, of course, you kinda manipulated a little bit, went outside the channel. Right? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But the initial route that it provided me, that is how I would've gotten there. There's no question.
It could have taken me the back way, that's not the only way to get to that point, but it clearly calculated the fastest, safest route, and that's what it gave me. - And the trip planning too, like if you are dealing with some areas that are really shallow, planning that when you are like on the chart plotter, you have to really, really zoom in, and you have to be so particular in some areas that you're creating like this crazy zigzags to get through. - That's just the time savings. - Yeah, it's so much work to really just do a safe passage that you don't have to think about it. The whole time you're thinking way, way more (mumbles) - Especially if you go to areas you're not familiar with, it saves you hours and hours and hours of time, and planning. - Not only hours of time, when I first brought my boat to this area for the very first time, I called a local buddy, a local captain- - Mm-hmm. - Because there's no
substitute for local knowledge. - 100%. - Well, guess what, now there is. - I mean, look, you still obviously keep an eye out- - Of course, you have to- - Whatever. - Keep a look out at all times, no matter what. - Exactly. - There's no way. - Exactly.
- Our eye is still important, real intelligence. (chuckles) You still wanna keep that going. - I wanna show you something cool on the radar while Victoria's right here. This is a pair of kayakers just off to the starboard side of the boat.
- Yep. - No way. - That was tracking on the radar. - Yep. - Yep. Show the kayakers, Victoria. - Yep, they're right there.
(speaker laughs) Hi! - That's crazy. - Yeah. - I just didn't wanna miss that when they're passing by. - Yeah. and it was just, it was red, it was green. - Yes, yep. - You saw it switch, yep. - Yep.
- Yeah. - Kayakers. - Yeah, really good. - Pretty cool. - One of the other things, not that it hasn't existed before, I'm sure Mike's used it, but Rico, since you're standing there, can you hit the 3D button on the lower left-hand corner? If you wanna look ahead, you can put your screen in 3D, so you can have a different look and look further ahead than you would be if you're taking the bird's eye view of 2D. - Yeah, and you can manipulate it to whatever angle is right for you.
- Yep. - By simply swiping up and down. And then, of course, you can zoom in, right? And really just be able to control that entire screen with your fingertips like that. - I love the satellite view function. That is for me massive. - Well, one of the things that I'm really excited about is the customization of the screens.
- Mm-hmm. - And being able to just set your screen. - And we didn't talk about that yet either, did we? - Yes, and I just like- - Well, we talked about the edges, we didn't talk about making display pages- - Right. - Or anything. - Yeah, I feel like we should make him a display page. - Sure, do it. (laughs)
- What would you normally pick? - For your everyday screen? - It depends on what I'm doing. For example, when I'm leaving in the morning, the fish-finder technology and the fish-finder screens are the least important to me. When I'm traveling, I want other parameters. I may want a chart plotter, right, that's obvious. So my main screen may just be a chart plotter zoomed into my area. However, on my port screen here, okay, I may want my night vision camera.
Okay, now, of course, it's blown out right now because there's so much light. I literally can see in the dark with my night vision camera. - [Victoria] What time do you normally leave? - 5:00 a.m. - Yeah.
- Okay, in the dark. And then on my starboard machine, I'll split the screen, and I can have my chart plotter and radar. And I'm not looking out the window because my eyes can see more here than they can here.
And even though we have spotlights and we have search lights, we don't use them at night when we're running offshore because then you can't see this, so I'm literally flying by wire. However, once I get to the area I'm fishing, then my pages are gonna be completely different, right? At that point, the information I need is gonna be fish-finding. So I might create a screen, and let's say I want as much information as I possibly can. I'm gonna go to six different screens, and I'll put my fish-finder here, I'll put a 3D fish-finder here, I can put my triple beam, I can put my down-facing.
Whatever it is that I would like to get as much situational awareness as I possibly want about fish-finding. - Boom! - So this is the information that I need while I'm fishing. I'm not traveling any longer. Maybe I wanna keep an eye on a distant storm at the same time.
So on my radar I wanna see, is that storm that's way out there approaching? - Can you easily zoom in and out of the radar? (speaker laughs) - How about that? So certainly you can use the button or you can use your fingertips, okay? - Oh, man. - Whatever works easiest for you. - One of the other things I wanna show you guys really quickly, assume we have it set up right. If you double tap on any one screen, it goes to full screen, tap it again, goes back to your six-way screen. - I didn't know that. (laughs)
That's another new thing. - That's why you brought me here. (chuckles) - Right, look at that. That's absolutely awesome. - Yeah,
you just need quick information. - Right. - Single double tap goes to full screen. Tap it again, goes right back to six. - Boom, boom. - Or whatever screen you were on before.
- Why didn't you guys show him anything? We needed... - I'm telling you- - ...there's reactions- - I mean, I honestly- it's important. - I didn't know that. - And keeping it simple too, Mike, since we do have six screens up right now. So say you swiped up from the bottom, right? - Yeah. - Because I already showed you
the menus, what screen would you be controlling? So we have this gold bar, so if we swipe up from the bottom right now, you see we're gonna be controlling the menu for that. But let's say we wanna control the menu for the radar, we just tap it, get the gold bar around it, swipe up from the bottom, all changes to our radar menu settings. - That's pretty cool. - Your setup on this boat, your sophisticated setup is same setup that you are cruising out at 5:00 a.m.
and a superyacht is leaving anchorage in the darkness at 5:00 a.m. - No question. - You've got the same setup. - Same technology. - Same technology. - Same technology. - From that boat to this boat. That's really crazy cool. - Right. - And, is there a learning curve? Of course, there is, you're using a modern piece of equipment that has so much to it.
There's gonna be a short learning curve. - Well, I mean, there's a learning curve when- - To everything there's- - Every time- - A learning curve- - My phone updates the stupid software. - Look, look, how do I use- - There's a learning curve. my ice maker? - Why did they take this away? - How do I use ice-maker in my refrigerator, there's a learning curve. - Exactly.
- So remember we're a different generation, we didn't grow up with this, we didn't grow up with this. - What do you mean "we"? - Yeah, what do you mean "we"? (laughs) - Me and Tim, all right. - That's right, me. - Today's generation, they have this, they have technology in their hands from the time they come out of the womb.
By the time they reach this level, I'm asking eight-year-olds how to do programming. I'm like, but they're like "here." I'm like, "What?" - Super-easy. - Right? - Yeah, it's true. - It's true. - Yes.
- Very different generation. - They grow up with it. - So if a dinosaur like me can do it, today's generation is gonna fly through it. - And remember, keeping it simple, right? Since Mike created this screen, if it's one of his most important screens, remember, swipe down from the top, we just press and hold, now it's a six-way screen, instant access. - Yeah, anytime, all I have to do is just- - Absolutely. - Swipe down, hit whatever screen I want. - Boom, that's right back. - [Rico] You don't have to go to a menu.
- You don't even have to go to a menu. - [Rico] You don't have to press for the FURUNO button, you just swipe down. - That's right. - [Rico] And use one of your favorites for docking.
- Now remember, it's only holding your six favorite screens. If at any time you want to get to all of your screens. - Sure. - 'Cause it holds 16 total, you go into the FURUNO, but your six favorite screens swipe down from the top, they're instantly there for you.
- Just because someone's behind the wheel of a boat doesn't mean they're qualified to be behind the wheel of a boat. - Well, you know what? And Mike, to that point, we do have a 10-inch display. So what you're seeing here can be on a small boat. - Right. - A flats boat. - Right. - All the way up to a megayacht that's gonna have the 24-inch.
So you have a 10-inch, the 13, we have the 16. (speaker laughs) - A megayacht! - He said, a megayacht. (speaker laughs) - Yeah. - And a mega yacht too. (speaker chuckles) And your tender can have it on there too, which is gonna be nice.
- Which it will. - Yeah. - And which it will. (speaker laughs) Yeah, exactly. - And the user interface
is the exact same, it's the same functions, the same features that you have here that on the 10-inch display. - Jeff, you want to join us for the mapping? Thanks if you- - Join us for the mapping. - I don't want you to...
We brought Jeff all the way from the West Coast, we want to use him. - And I brought the- - No, he brought you to the weather. - To the weather. (chuckles) - Send him back. - So we've completely reworked the chart engine on TZtouchXL.
I don't know, Eric, explain to us what, I mean- - It's a new chart database. - What did you guys do? (speaker laughs) What did you do? - It's much more automated. (speaker laughs) So we're gonna preload some, the NOAA raster charts, but the new TZ MAPS charts, they allow the AI routing, they allow the route collision avoidance features, and they allow a lot of other new features with crowdsourced data, and they're the wave of the future. That's the way people are gonna interact with our machines in the future is these TZ MAPS. And they're gonna continue to expand and grow, and dynamically they'll change on the fly. With TZtouchXL, once you decide what charts you need, and you can purchase them on the fly and download them on the fly, they'll automatically stay updated.
- Oh! - So you don't have to do anything. People go, "Uh-huh, when are you gonna update the charts?" - Yeah. - "When are you gonna update the charts?" That's no longer an issue. As long as you have an internet connection on the vessel, these charts will all stay updated. And now you can actually go ahead and manually update the charts and click that, and you can actually- - It's like if you didn't have internet and then you- - Right.
- You connected to internet or something- - You have a really good internet now- - Yeah. - You can just do it, okay. - Once you have a given area selected- - Yeah. - If you don't need certain areas, you can unselect- - Oh! - Those areas. - Okay, to make it faster.
- And yeah, and then it'll automatically reduce the bandwidth and download faster. - Yeah, that's great. - So choose what you want to download, a vector or raster, the satellite photos, bathy imagery. - Increase the resolution, increase the data, the layering capability, crowdsourced data, so you can enter data here that will automatically go out to the internet. If you see a wreck or a navigation hazard, you can add that to your actual chart, and it'll actually push that out to the net, if you want to. - Oh! - And that's just a safety thing that you can crowdsource and just participate. - Does it get
sort of approved? - It gets... What happens is, other people will see it. - Yeah. - And if they agree, they can
kinda put a like on it. - Confirm it. - Give it a- - Ah! - Or give it a thumbs down. - Like the good old ways. - And then it gets checked. Yeah, exactly, yeah. - Okay, all right. - I've seen that on some of our competitors' products that don't check the data. - Yeah.
- And you can touch in the middle of Manhattan, and there's a big founder mark. - Yeah, that's very scary to me. - They're gonna catch a fish in the middle of Times Square or something like that. This is actually more crowdsource and people can confirm and like it or dislike it, and then we'll have a resolution protocol.
Cool thing about TZ MAPS is, we've gone back out to all the different hydrographic offices, all the countries around the world and said, "Hey, let's make new deals and get your latest data, and then we'll keep that updated in real-time on these machines. And that's one of the biggest things is the update process, and the fact that we can take data that if you see a wreck, or pops a virtual buoy or something like that, we'll be able to take that and pop it up on the machine within seconds. - We have the new BathyVision charts on here. - Right. - So it's bathymetric charts, so basically it shows the contours of the sea floor.
- Oh, wow! - And it goes down to three inches, I think, is- - Yeah, yeah. The resolution is super-high. - What does that look like? - So to change it, I would just go in here. - TZTouch - Yeah, right there.
- And I wanna go to TZ BathyVision. - Oh! - Look, there you go. - Wow! - Yeah. - So you're able to see the depth contours in there. - [Victoria] Man, this is huge for fishing, right? - Yeah, right. There is actually five different steps, so I just, again, just a tap.
- Depending on the resolution you wanna see. - Oh, wow! - You can do that. So I go back, here's the number one is down. - Yeah, yeah. - Mm-hmm. - And then- - Yeah. - As you tap, it gets more and more detailed.
- [Victoria] This is amazing. - Especially for fishermen like Mike, that gives you something that was not available prior to this. - Correct, no question. - If you go into the chart section here, you can actually purchase the unlock codes directly from the MFDs. - What about the self-mapping the ground? - Oh, the PBG. - PBG. - Oh yeah, that was a pretty cool. - Mike is very familiar with PBG.
(speaker laughs) - Absolutely, so what PBG does, your Personal Bathymetric Generator is literally create a three-dimensional chart of your path, especially now with BathyVision, they're providing you with this incredible contour and this incredible detail. There are times and areas where you wanna map the bottom yourself, not only for your personal use, but you could share that information also across a big network. So other guys, what they're mapping and what you're mapping can all be unified, so to speak. For example, I'm trolling for wahoo at a 10 to 15 mile an hour speed. I can map the bottom at that same time.
So I'm doing multiple different things, right? And I can see it when I want it, turn it off if I don't wanna see it, I could save it, I could share it, and I can map over it. So every time I go over that same area, it literally overlays my previous path making it more detailed, more detailed, more detailed. And at the end of the day I have my own 3D charts of my own specific area in detail like I've never had before. PBG too is another game changer. - And one of the things I wanna point out, a lot of people we've talked to about PBG get a little nervous that it's saving so much data.
But one, we've done calculations, and I'm just going with TZT3 'cause that's the part I know. We had used 256 gigabyte cards for our charts, but there was enough room left over that you could do PBG for eight hours a day for 20 years before you filled that card. - Oh, wow! - So if you have access to PBG, use it, get that great information, you are not gonna fill up the card, and the TZTXLs are coming with 512 gigabit cards. - So yeah- - No chance of filling it up. - No chance, that's amazing. - So easy way to lighten or dim the display, how would I do that? - Okay, simply by pressing, just tapping the power button.
We got a couple of different modes here. We have daylight mode, we have dusk mode, and we have night mode. And if we hit night mode right now, what's gonna happen is, it's going to take it down to night mode, so it'd be very difficult to see. So since it is the daytime- - Yeah, you don't wanna do that. - We don't wanna do this.
- We're just gonna adjust it down, but you see all- - Yep. - The displays in the network go down together, and then when you're ready to bring them back up. And if you do have a problem, you can simply tap the power button, like say for instance, you- - Oh, no way. - [Rico] Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh.
- You do leave them- - Once it's too dark, and you can't see. - Once it's too dark, just every FURUNO device that has a touch screen has this safety feature built in. If you turn it on, you know the screen came on, but you're not seeing anything, just keep tapping the power button, and it'll move through. It'll go all the way to dark, and then it'll come all the way back up to brilliant. - So that was, would've been my next question because I've had that, you step on a vessel, you haven't been... They came in at nighttime befall, and you're like, oh shoot, like how do I...?
- Myself and the tech support guys get the call all the time. It's one of the most popular tech support calls we get. - Get that out to the mainstream, you guys can do it with the power button- - Just with the power buttons. - Tap the power button. - Yep, until you see light.
- You do what, tell me again. (laughs) Tell me. - If you ever have it set to night mode. - Right. - And you get back to the boat the next day and you can't see the screen. - I've made that mistake.
- Just keep tapping the power button, it'll move that bar. - I have literally canceled fishing trips- - Yeah. - Because I couldn't (speaker laughs) get my screen on. - So yeah. - And you're telling me all I have to do is- - Just keep tapping. - Keep tapping the power button.
- So if it's all the way down low, it'll move all the way up, but if I keep tapping, it'll go low and come all the way back up. - And then it'll come up. - Yep, absolutely. - If you're in an area where you don't want your echo sounders to transmit or your radar- - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - You can put your radar in standby, and your echo sounders in standby as well. - No way. - Yeah, so it's really
pretty simple. - So you don't even have to go to the radar screen or to any other screen, you can do it all here with- - Just touch the power button all right here. (speaker mumbles) So it makes it really easy, even though there could be 10 different sensors attached to this MFD, you can just go to the power button, turn that on, and then once you're happy, touch it, and it'll go away. And you can shut off the system either in stages, like if you're up on the flybridge and you say, "Hey, I'm not gonna use the flybridge unit," I can turn off this device at the flybridge or any MFD, or you can shut down the whole network from this display as well.
- With one touch. - With one touch. - Yeah. - Shut down the whole boat. I mean, so not the whole boat, but the whole system, the whole navigation system. - For this place,
like we don't wanna do- - Yeah. - Every single one separately - Right, right. - [Victoria] So if you just do that, it will turn everything off. - Yes, okay. - Amazing. - That's usually my job
turning things off- - Yeah. - And on. (speaker laughs) - Yeah, that's your job. - That was my job. (speaker laughs) - Yeah. - That's easy now. - And if you have a lot of kids or people who you don't want to mess with the display on the bridge, for example, so you can actually lock the screen.
- [Victoria] Oh, so now nobody can do anything. - Yeah, so now... - [Victoria] Oh okay.
Oh, that's fantastic. - So now that's good. - Yeah, actually might be not a bad- - That is fantastic. (speaker mumbles) - Especially on the tender.
(speaker mumbles) - How responsive is this? Can I touch something? - Absolutely. - Am I allowed? Yeah, press Overlays, and you can see it. - Oh, it's very responsive. - So you can turn on. - Yeah, you can do that, or you can do this as well. - Ah, no way. - So you can go back
and forth. - Okay. - [Speaker] So if you wanna go to one or the other. - Super-responsive. - Makes it real easy. There's a dwell time that the information stays up on the screen that you can actually program, but if you want it to stay up on the screen while you're reading it, just touch anywhere on the display, and that won't go away. - Mm-hmm. - So it knows- - Oh! - Your finger is there.
- [Victoria] Like Instagram Stories. - Yeah, it's like Instagram Stories, exactly. - Yeah. - Exactly.
- When we were deciding which boat we were gonna get and we were able to figure out a way for us to get a Bering, a huge thing was safety. Talking to Aleksey resonated to us so much because he put such an emphasis on safety onboard, and being able to go and take your family, and not think about it to now experience what you guys have been doing, and to know that you have such focus on bringing safety and traveling safely. - Absolutely. - To this specific software that you are going in this direction to have that autonomous sort of level- - Mm-hmm. - That you can trust the equipment, I think just goes hand in hand with having an Explorer Yacht. Like you said, you can have the safest skin out there, but if the brain is not safe- - No question, you have nothing.
- You've not got that. - You have nothing because the truth is, I wanna come home, I want my boat to come home, I want my people to come home. (cellphone ringing) Sorry about that. (Victoria mumbles) My mom called. (speaker laughs) I want my mom to come home when she's on the boat.
(laughs) Okay? On the road, you have signs, you have help, you have everything. Out there we don't, we're literally a few degrees means running aground or running right through the inlet in a deep fogbank. She's 100% right, safety has to be your number one priority, and that comes with a confidence, and that comes with trust, right? Knowing that the data, the information that's being provided to you is legit, it's accurate, it's spot on, and it's instantaneous. - Let's go back to the classroom. So what's ahead for FURUNO? Like five years from now, 10 years from now.
- I'm the marketing guy, so I'm probably not the best guy to be talking about, but let's talk to, this is Matt. - What's up, Matt? - Well, you know Matt. - We know you. - Yeah. - (laughs) Hey, hey!
- Long time no see. - [Victoria] What's your official title again? - I'm the National Sales Manager of this fine establishment. - Oh, it sounds like a person to talk to about the future.
- I can talk about some things about the future, but the guy really to talk to would be Brad, if we wanna drop in on him. - Okay. - Well, you're not getting off that easy, so you're coming with us. (Victoria chuckles) - (laughs) All right, I got you. (Victoria laughs) Yeah, let's head down.
- We're gathering a super group. - Yeah, hopefully he is not in another meeting with 14 different countries and... - Okay, you just see you guys, see if he's available to- - Yeah, you bet. - To chat with us. - Hey, you have a quick second? - Yeah, come on in. - (mumbles) come in. - It's a lot of us. - Hello! - Hi (mumbles) - How's it going? Good to see you guys. - Hi!
- Yeah. - Good to see you. - Victoria. - Yeah, Brad, yeah. - Rico. - Hi, Rico, nice, yeah. - What is your official title? - I'm President and CFO. - This is the guy, he is gonna tell us about the future. - Yeah. - Okay.
Future of FURUNO, future of marine electronics. - Okay. - Five years from now, 10 years from now. (Brad laughs) I know you didn't expect this, but- - Yeah. - What are you thinking?
- FURUNO is a technology company, and FURUNO Electric Company is making huge investments in technology. We've got a brand-new R&D center that they've built in Japan to develop new features in our products, but FURUNO has always been known as a really strong sensor company. We've got some of the best radars in the industry, I think we've got some of the best sounders and sonars in the industry, but the processing is what kinda takes it to the next level. Analyzing what's out there and helping you kind of identify potential risks, right? So the next step thinking about, okay, what can we do to help the navigator make decisions about navigating? Okay, so I think that would be the next step.
So it's making suggestions. Okay, here's a potential risk, you need to maybe move this direction or go around the risk in this manner. And then, of course, the next step after that is autonomous. So it's completely steering the ship itself.
- The boat's driving themselves. - Yeah, so I think that's the future, right, so that- - See, the charter is outta business though. - It's done, it's done. (laughs) - Yeah, FURUNO- - You guys get to spend more time on the beach hopefully. - We get to cook. (laughs) - And FURUNO is really investing heavily in that direction.
So I don't know, maybe you've heard while you've been here. Recently they were part of a consortium where they were involved in a fully autonomous voyage from Tokyo to, I can't remember if it was to Osaka- - Tokyo and to Osaka one. - We have not heard this. - Yeah. - Yeah, completely, yeah. - Really? - Completely hands off. It's exciting to be, I really feel like we're at the forefront of a lot of autonomous technology, starting from just before I came to work here in 2001, there's been a lot more outreach to other technology partners.
Our satellite compasses came about because of partnership with Delft University in The Netherlands. So we have some really interesting bits of technology transfer that are happening. The Magruie project over in Japan certainly not the only autonomy project in the world, but yeah, the most recent culmination of that was an autonomous sailing from basically the harbor in Tokyo all the way down to our home waters right outside Osaka. That's on a grand scale, that's like a small container feeder ship. - Yeah. - And then we also
a couple of years ago, the voyage of the Nellie Bly, Sea Machines Robotics is a company that we've done a lot of work with. They had people onboard, but they were hands off, obviously we wanna be safe. - Yeah. - With this unmanned stuff, but they sailed all the way around the archipelago of Denmark on an unmanned craft. - Wow! - And that was almost two years ago.
So to see this, and I started on rusty old fishing ships- - Yeah. - In the 1980s, and so it's amazing to me to see this happen, and so we've got one foot in both camp. As Brad calls out, we have this amazing augmented reality technology that enables the user to have almost a heads-up display in a display or like even in a head visor all the way out to, depending on who you talk to, like the fifth or the seventh stage of autonomy, which is completely unmanned, completely autonomous with machine learning going on. So, and we've been involved in this pretty much every step of the way.
- This pretty insane. Is it true that you were fishing in like northern sea or something intense like this? - Yeah, I'd fished for a couple of years in Alaskan waters, and then I was working on both crabbers and trawlers actually over in the Sea of Okhotsk in Russia. - And you actually know Aleksey like way back. - I know Aleksey Mikhailov, I actually first met him in 2004, I talked with him at the Lauderdale show.
(chuckles) But the interesting thing was when I met him at the show, I was like, you're from Magadan, do you know this guy? Do you know that guy? It's like... - Same circles. - Yeah, two to three degrees of separation from everybody. - Absolutely insane. - So it's been great to reengage with my Russian colleagues.
- Yeah. - Insane. - So, I mean, most of the viewers are familiar at this point with like ChatGPT and so on. So AI is not going anywhere anymore at this point, so you guys seeing that also being implemented in the navigation equipment and in the future of navigation, right? - Yeah, for sure. And we tend to be a pretty cautious conservative company so- - We've heard. - Yeah.
(laughs) Yeah, you think? Yeah. Yeah, we're speeding stuff up to market, but again, we wanna have one foot on either side of the technology. We want professional mariners running the show, but there's so much assistance with AI, it's a natural combination at this point. Historically we've gone from big commercial stuff and shrink it down into that sort of leisure or light marine package.
- Yeah, don't call it light marine, please don't call it light marine. (Matt laughs) It's very insulting to us, little. - Yeah, so now we've got... (laughs) Yeah, so now we have really professional marine electronics even in a small package that is being blown up into these commercial applications. It's a super-exciting time. - Thanks for having us. - Yeah. - We had a blast.
I know this was almost like a bit of a sacred project to be able to experience it in person. We are really, really excited about what we're gonna have onboard. So thanks for having us. - Yeah. - This was- - It's been a delight having you here. - Such a pleasure. And we look forward to getting underway with you too.
- It was worth the cold weather, for sure. (laughs) - Yeah, yeah, especially today. - Maybe a little bit warmer for sea trials. - Yes.
We'll come back in the summer, let's put it that way. - For sure, yeah. - [Rico] We'll do have to do sea trials with the FURUNO team onboard. - That's true...you guys-
- [Rico] So now we have to make that happen. - Of course. - Yeah, you'll have us, yeah. (laughs) - We have plenty of volunteers. - Oh gosh. (laughs) All right, you guys, if you have any questions, put it in the comment section, and we'll make sure that the FURUNO team is monitoring it for a few days and answering those. And make sure you like, subscribe to all that share button, and all the good stuff.
And we'll see you on the next one. (Victoria mumbles)
2024-03-20 01:32
