Browsing by Author "Bunn, Nicholas Raymond"
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- ItemThe development of a service oriented architecture for digital services on maritime vessels(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-04) Bunn, Nicholas Raymond; Kruger, K.; Bekker, Annie; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Engineering. Dept. of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering.ENGLISH SUMMARY: Digitalisation efforts in the maritime domain have, until now, predominantly focussed on ports and terminals. Contributions to the adoption of digitalisation technologies on vessels themselves stem mostly from industry, although the value of doing so has become increasingly apparent where digitalisation is said to present opportunities for improved vessel operation and performance. A popular approach to digitalisation, identified in the manufacturing and Industry 4.0 realms, is that of service-orientation and digital services. Here, systems are composed of discrete contributions, providing flexible and adaptable solutions to digitalisation challenges in dynamic environments with evolving needs. This thesis details the design, development, and evaluation of a service-oriented architecture to aid in decision-making on maritime vessels. This architecture takes a microservice approach to service-orientation, employing a custom variation of the API-gateway pattern to enable a flexible and reconfigurable system. The proposed architecture includes an aggregation layer to abstract coordination activities from the service layer, negating the need for a service-mesh in the backend. The architecture is tested and evaluated through a case study, carried out on the icebreaking polar supply and research vessel, the S.A. Agulhas II. This case study deploys information services and existing engineering models describing the vessel as microservices. Aggregating services are designed to leverage these services, providing information to aid in route planning and support more informed decision-making. The case study details specific technology implementations to provide the specified platform functionality, with the most notable of these being gRPC as an RPC framework. The experiments indicate that RPC is a suitable communication mechanism for in-memory aggregation and real-time data delivery in this context. However, it was discovered that the gRPC interceptor functionality is not a robust choice for all cases of rate-limiting and retry logic, and recommendations are provided for a revision of these components. This thesis concludes that the proposed architecture is successful in providing a reconfigurable service-oriented architecture for digital service delivery on maritime vessels. Generic platform components were developed in the four programming languages used in the case study, showcasing the interoperability of services written in various languages, and by various domain experts, within the system.