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Marine drift & draft monitoring

Every tanker,
held to the line.

DriftScout reads a hull-mounted optical target through a fixed jetty sensor and reports lateral drift, draft change and range in real time — to the centimetre, at 10 Hz.

Contact sales How it works
No rig on the vessel — one sensor and a lightweight magnetic target.
±1 cm @ 12 m 10 Hz live WARN / ALARM discipline SCADA · Modbus · OPC UA
Berth 04 · alongside Live
DriftScout operator console showing the vessel overview, live video, drift gauges and equipment status.
The problem

A moored tanker is never truly still.

Line stretch, tide, passing-vessel surge — a moored tanker can move along the berth while cargo operations are live. Unchecked, sustained movement stresses the loading arm and the mooring system. DriftScout makes it visible — and alarms on it.

Lateral drift

Sustained movement along the berth line — line stretch, surge, mooring-system loading.

WARN / ALARM

Draft change

Hull rise and fall during discharge and tide. Expected — so it is reported, never alarmed.

Reported

Range & rotation

Supplementary vessel geometry at the berth, continuously available to the operator.

Reported
No false alarms during unloading.  Draft change from cargo and tide is measured and reported — it never triggers the alarm. Alarms key on sustained lateral drift only.
How it measures

One sensor. One target. One calibration.

A fixed optical sensor at the jetty tracks a coded target on the hull. Every measurement follows the same disciplined chain.

Monitoring chain
DriftScout monitoring chain — from optical sensing on the hull to operator alerts and SCADA outputs.

  1. Detect

    The sensor identifies the coded hull target and validates lock quality before any value is trusted.

  2. Calibrate

    One-shot lens calibration and automatic berth-axis alignment. Approved calibrations are locked and cannot be overwritten.

  3. Project

    Target displacement is resolved onto the berth’s lateral, vertical and range axes — in the operator’s convention.

  4. Judge

    Sustained movement is separated from wave oscillation and compared against per-vessel tolerance profiles — LNG carrier, VLCC, container, general.

  5. Act

    WARN / ALARM raises a persisted alarm record: notifications on every console, external triggers, SCADA outputs.

< 10 mm
Lateral accuracy @ 12 m
10 Hz
Live update rate
300 × 300 mm
Target panel
0.4 kg
Target mass
The target

A non-permanent vessel interface.

A lightweight coded panel, magnetically attached to the hull after mooring and removed before unmooring. No permanent modification to the vessel — ever.

  • Weather- and UV-resistant panel 300 × 300 × 40 mm, high-contrast coded surface.
  • Magnetic attachment ≈ 0.4 kg, four magnetic studs — on the hull in seconds.
  • Fitted and removed in minutes Handled by terminal staff with the supplied pole, after mooring and before unmooring.
  • No vessel modification No rig, no radar, no reflectors on the hull.
Hull target concept
DriftScout coded magnetic target concept — a compact panel attached to the vessel hull.
The console

One console for the whole berth.

Every screen an operator needs, in one responsive application — on the control-room wall or in your pocket.

Sensor configuration · calibration & status
DriftScout sensor configuration screen showing the registered sensor, calibration state and operating status.
Compliance & audit exports
DriftScout reporting workspace with drift reports, alarm history and audit-log exports.

Recorded, exportable, auditable.

Every session keeps a baseline, a time-series of measurements, state transitions and alarm events. Export drift reports, alarm history and audit logs as CSV or PDF for operational review and compliance.

CSV · PDF · Alarm history · Audit log
Capabilities

Built for terminal operations.

Every capability is engineered to one end: a measurement you can trust while cargo is live — without adding work for the crew.

Alarm discipline

Alarms key on lateral drift only; draft change from cargo and tide is reported but never alarms. Every event is a persisted, acknowledgeable record.

No false alarms

Technician-proof calibration

One-shot lens calibration and automatic berth-axis alignment. Locked calibrations no restart or API can overwrite.

Millimetre-grade scale

Industrial integration

Modbus and OPC UA expose every sensor to your PLC or DCS, with a direct alarm output and a heartbeat watchdog.

SCADA-ready

Commissioning bench

Built-in protocol emulators and scripted drills prove the integration before a single PLC is wired.

No bench hardware

Operations-grade service

Live in-app logs, boot-time backups, hand-gesture commands, CSV/PDF compliance exports.

Run it like a utility

Multi-sensor scalability

One measurement engine drives one or many sensors, one berth or several — standalone or integrated with your platform.

Grows with your terminal
Industrial I/O

Two SCADA surfaces, one event pipeline.

Live drift state, alarm level and heartbeats are published to the plant. Both surfaces are fed by the same event pipeline — they can never disagree.

Modbus

Native Modbus TCP, RTU or serial. Live values, state and alert level, a direct alarm output and a heartbeat watchdog for the PLC or DCS.

PLC / DCS

OPC UA

Every sensor exposed as a browsable object with typed variables — drift, draft, range, rotation, state, level, heartbeats.

Browsable address space

Webhooks & MQTT

Event-driven triggers for beacons, IP speakers and external annunciation — plus a REST API and a live WebSocket stream for applications.

Application integration
Safety boundary respected.  DriftScout publishes alarms and notifications and is designed for integration into terminal safeguarding systems under the terminal’s own safety and cause-and-effect assessment.
Deployment

Autonomous, or integrated with your platform.

One measurement engine, two deployment modes. Start standalone at a single berth, grow to a coordinated, port-wide installation.

Standalone

Self-contained for a single berth. Bundled storage, zero configuration, local operation — up and running in a day.

Single berth

Platform-integrated

Coordinates with the terminal’s central platform — shared berth context, operating history and presentation across the wider system.

Port-wide
Reference deployment

LNG terminal — main jetty, Mediterranean

A single optical sensor at the gangway monitors LNG carriers above 200 m LOA throughout discharge, complementing the terminal’s existing berthing-aid monitoring.

Proposed main-jetty deployment
DriftScout deployment concept at an LNG terminal main jetty — optical sensor on the gangway, coded target on the hull.
Berth & sensor layout
System overview showing the sensor layout at the terminal jetty, complementary to the existing berthing-aid platform.
> 200 m
LNG carrier LOA
7–8 m
Sensor from fender line
±1 cm
Lateral accuracy
Specifications

Preliminary technical characteristics.

Values subject to confirmation during detailed engineering and site acceptance — every installation is verified with controlled displacement tests.

System DriftScout — optical drift & draft monitor
Measurement Fixed optical sensor observing a coded hull target
Monitoring scope Lateral displacement · vertical / draft variation · optional range and rotation
Accuracy Better than 10 mm (lateral channel, subject to calibration and site acceptance)
Update rate 10 Hz
Operating temperature −10 °C to +65 °C
Target 300 × 300 × 40 mm weather- and UV-resistant panel · ≈ 0.4 kg · magnetic attachment · handling pole
Interfaces Browser UI · REST / WebSocket · Modbus · OPC UA · MQTT · HTTPS webhook
Deployment Standalone or integrated with the terminal platform · multi-sensor architecture
Sensor variants Safe-area and explosion-proof options

No radar. No reflectors. No rig on the vessel.

Contact

Discuss your berth.

Tell us about your terminal — we’ll scope the monitoring layout, accuracy and integration for your site.

Email us Response within one business day.
Scope of supply.  Optical sensor, coded target and handling pole, operator console, SCADA interfaces, installation and site-acceptance support.