Patent
Placement of containers on the ship is a combinatorial process. This planning process is determined by the estimated amount of cargo and its weight, origin and destination of cargo and the condition of the ship at the port of loading and unloading. Changes in quantity and load are natural events that need to be accommodated, which have a direct impact on ship loading.
In the region of artificial intelligence (AI), this uncertainty actually has a pattern. Case-based reasoning method, one of the branches of AI, applied to speed up the planning process for loading container ships. This method, named Casestow, has been registered (patent pending) at the patent office Deutsche Patent- und Markenamt, Berlin (2004) and European Patent Office, Berlin (2006).