About Vector Nautical
By Seamen, For Seamen.
Our mission at Vector Nautical is to bridge the gap between the complex demands of modern seafaring and the digital tools available on the bridge. We are founded on a simple but powerful philosophy: a "seaman first" approach. We believe that technology should serve the officer, not the other way around. Our goal is to create intuitive, practical, and powerful tools that reduce manual workload, eliminate repetitive tasks, and enhance the critical decision-making of the professionals who navigate our seas.
The challenges facing today's mariners go beyond just route planning. This includes tedious manual work, such as extracting boundary data from sources like publications and PDFs for conversion into system-compatible digital formats, as well as performing the complex calculations required for a broad spectrum of maritime operations. Vector Nautical was created to solve these problems.
The Founder's Story
My name is Viktor Kolbasov, and for years I served as a voyage planning officer on board of a ship. I spent countless hours grappling with a critical and time-consuming task: planning safe sea voyages. Even with modern Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs), I found the process to be largely manual, unnecessarily complex, and prone to error.
Onboard, I saw firsthand that the incredibly rich data within these charts was not being used to its full potential. But a more profound realization followed: as officers, we had no effective way to voice our needs and frustrations with the very systems we used every day. Our feedback often got lost, unable to be effectively transmitted up the chain of command, leaving us to simply "make do" with inadequate tools.
This gap between the user on the bridge and the developer on shore became my core motivation. I decided that if existing channels weren't working, I would have to forge a new path. My solution was to turn to academia and personal research —to use a rigorous, evidence-based approach to not only define the problem but to build a prototype that could prove a better way was possible.
This journey, from a frustrated officer on the bridge to a researcher and developer, became the bedrock of Vector Nautical's philosophy. It is why we exist: to give a voice to the mariner's needs and to build the tools we always wished we had. This belief was first put into practice through my Master's thesis, which laid the foundation for our flagship project, Route Assistant.
A Foundation of Academic Research
Route Assistant is built upon a solid academic foundation. The project is the evolution of my Master's thesis, submitted for the degree of Master of Engineering in Autonomous Maritime Operations at Novia University of Applied Sciences.
The research involved:
- A project-based methodology to develop a full pipeline for ENC data extraction, processing, graph construction, and route calculation.
- The successful implementation of a practical prototype, 'Route Assistant,' to demonstrate these capabilities.
- The conclusion that the project serves as a valuable tool for supporting navigation officers and as a solid base for further development in autonomous and AI-assisted voyage planning systems.
The Principles That Guide Us
We believe technology should serve the user. Our goal is to shift the focus of innovation away from purely corporate optimizations and toward creating tools that directly help mariners on the bridge with their time-consuming manual tasks.
The maritime industry suffers from a lack of open-source tools that can unlock the power of nautical data. While the IHO S-63 standard is essential for data integrity, it also creates "digital barriers" that can stifle innovation. Our philosophy is to foster openness and collaboration within this compliant framework. Our approach is two-fold:
- Empowering Professionals with Compliant Tools: We create powerful analytical modules designed to be integrated into a company's existing S-63 compliant systems. This allows professionals to leverage the unencrypted data they already have legal access to for advanced analysis and automation.
- Championing an Open S-57 Ecosystem: For students, researchers, and developers, our mission is to build the most comprehensive and accessible resource for open S-57 ENC data. This involves aggregating existing open datasets and formally petitioning other international hydrographic offices to release their data for non-navigational, research purposes.
We combine deep academic research with the practical, real-world experience of a voyage planning officer to ensure our solutions are not only technically advanced but also operationally relevant and effective.
Advisory Board
Mikael Manngård
Project Manager, Team Leader
Automation and Maritime Simulation
Novia University of Applied Sciences
I am guided by leaders from industry and academia who have reviewed my research and believe in this mission. They contribute their valuable expertise in a personal capacity, and their involvement does not represent an official endorsement by their respective organizations.
Interested in supporting our mission as an advisor? Contact us
Get in Touch
Whether you want to contribute, collaborate, or just learn more—we’d love to connect.