“Man overboard!” is one of the most frightening things you can hear aboard ship and the outcome is often tragic. Now, maritime technology firm Zelim has achieved official certification for its ZOE Man-Overboard (MOB) machine-vision detection system.
I’ve served on a variety of ships, from small yachts to giant RoRo containers, and the worst thing to hear aside from “fire” and “massive stern gland failure” was always “man overboard.” That’s because going over the rail and hitting the water is an event that doesn’t have very good survival odds unless you’re floating on a flat sea in a dead calm – and even then, things can get pretty nasty.
If a person is lucky enough to fall overboard during daylight and there’s someone on deck to see them fall or hear the splash, that’s only the start of the emergency. What was a human being a second before is now a head bobbing among the waves as the vessel moves quickly away. Once the alarm is given, at least one of the crew takes the duty to literally point to the victim while keeping them in sight at all times. Meanwhile, the skipper and the rest of the crew work frantically to put the ship about and head back to recover the person.
ZOE
That is just possible in a small craft that isn’t going very fast and can circle back quickly, though it’s surprising how fast that floating head can vanish. On something huge like a North Sea passenger ferry or a freighter, just stopping the ship can take miles to accomplish, never mind putting about. No wonder so many person overboard incidents end in a search for a body that itself might never be found.
What the ZOE system does to improve the odds is provide a ship with enough multi-spectral sensor cameras to monitor all 360 degrees around the vessel at all times and in all types of weather. The sensors are a combination of thermal and high-definition visible light cameras that are linked to a system using computer vision and machine learning algorithms trained using a proprietary dataset of over 9.5 million annotated maritime objects. Put these together and the system can detect a person falling overboard instantly and can track them continuously day or night.
Instantly is the operative word because without immediate detection the chances of locating the victim drops to 20%, which is why I always hated working alone on the foredeck. One slip and it would have been Goodnight, Irene.
On April 14, 2026, ZOE received official certification to the ISO 21195:2020 standard from Lloyd’s Register. During the 90-day certification trial, the system reached a detection rate of 97%, which exceeds the certification minimum. Equally important, it only generated one false alarm per day. Though not part of the certification, Zelim had ZOE independently tested to detect not only adults but also children and infants.
Source: Zelim
