Data-Driven Insights and Team USA Sailing with Dimitri Ponkratov

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone. Welcome back here to Textron tv.

You know, I, I think I'm, I'm, we're gonna have a lot of fun. I've got a great story to share with you folks here today. Let me introduce you to Dmitri Panoff.

Uh, Dmitri is the Marine Director over at Siemens Digital Industry Software. I hope I got all that right. Dmitri, welcome to Tech Drunk tv.

Thank you very much. Thank you. It's a great pleasure being here.

Thank you. I think it's a great, uh, pleasure to have you on Dmitri, we're gonna be talking about how semen and a lot of people, this is gonna be new to them. We're gonna talk in a little bit about how Siemens has helped, helped team USA sailing to win its first Olympic medal since 2016.

And it's quite a story you would think, how the heck did a company like Siemens and Siemens Digital help a sailing team? We're going to get to that in a second, but before we do, I wanted to sh kind of ask you to share with our audience a little bit about you. Right.

Who are they listening to? I said, you're the marine director. I'm not even sure what a marine director is, but be tell us, tell us the Dimitri Tuffs, the Ritov story.

Yes. So, um, my story is pretty simple. I am just passionate about ship building and maritime business in general.

So when I was at just eight years old, I felt like, oh, that's a in very instance industry, and I would like to be part of that. And since then, it's just, you know, I'm just, I'm, I'm stuck to this industry. I'm doing my best, you know, to, to do, um, as much as possible, as much co collaboration and interaction with this industry.

So, for instance, um, it's a very inter, uh, international industry. So I did my PhD in China. Then, uh, um, after the defense, I moved to Norway.

Um, and then in Norway I was a teaching at university again, the married time things. And then, uh, after that I got an, um, invitation to join a voice register, which is the Elst, uh, classification Society, Marita Classification Society based in London. And that was really hands-on experience.

So I was part of, um, technical investigation department, and this is department, it's, uh, it's like a short notice department. If something happening on the shipyard or vessel, uh, they can call us and say, listen, can you please come to Singapore or Panama tomorrow and fix, fix, like, you know, fix our vessel. And that was my job for nearly, um, uh, six years.

And then I got invite to join the, um, Royal Institution of Naval Architects in the position of, um, uh, technical director. And again, it's very international, um, organization. It's, it's a professional body.

And we had a very interesting collaboration with the different companies, individuals and so on. And then just last year after, um, uh, uh, Royal Institution of never acted, so I joined, uh, Siemens Digital Industry software. But I would say that because I'm so passionate about the maritime industry, so even like if I have a spare time, I do something, something related to the, to the maritime business.

I do sailing, I do swimming, I do model making, and I get a ship model making, um, these kind of things. And recently, um, so for this year I had a quite a, had two main challenges. One is, uh, uh, cross Atlantic ocean on the wooden boat using the traditional navigation tools.

So it was the SEC stand and the, um, the, the debt tracking. And the second one was actually to swim from Europe to Asia, uh, in Danella Street. That was among a few, few weeks ago.

So that's why, you know, that's Amazing. Like passion. But let's, yeah, I, I, I, well, your passion comes through even in your voice and your face, but let, let me dive in there a little bit.

So a wooden boat, like a Viking or Norse kind of boat, or more like maybe, you know, we don't have Spanish galleons anymore, but you know, what, what kind of wooden boat was it? Is it 18th century lagger? So that's basal was designed in, uh, northern France, um, to chase smugglers because, uh, obviously that time, it was quite a, quite a interesting trait happening between, uh, England and France.

So it's a, it's a very instant design. So it's a three, uh, three must, um, boat Uhhuh, um, about the 20 meters long, um, wooden and this exact replica of that boat, Was it only sail powered, or was there an edge? Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, Sailing. So you sailed the Atlantic. Exactly.

So it was no ancient, well, it was ancient, but we didn't use this cross atlantic whatsoever. That's amazing. Look, how cool is that?

And then, you know, look, not everyone is, is geographically tuned in. They hear swimming from Europe to Asia. They may think you're going around the Horn of Africa, and, and that's, you didn't make that slip.

But you know, there's the land bridge Turkey for many, many years. What is today? Turkey, uh, was the bridge from Asia to Europe, right.

And, and the, the ba first straits into the middle straits, as you mentioned, really, uh, where you can swim on one side, on Europe, go through and, and ur nasia, how, how long a swim is that to give us some sort of, uh, you know, scale. So for me, it was my first experience. That's, that's why, um, I was not, um, I was happy with my time.

5 kilometers and it took me one hour and 48 minutes. Um, That's fine. That, that's about, you know, for us Americans who are metric challenged, you know, that's probably a tool over 10 miles.

Right. So that's a, that's a decent swim. Good for you.

No, I think it's, it's less, less than that. 5 kilometers. I don't think it's at 10 miles.

No, no. Isn't it? Oh, no, it's two kilometers per mile.

Right? Yeah. I'm sorry.

I had it reversed. I sur I told you with metric challenged. It's still a nice swim though, and, and good for you.

Um, and I'm glad to at least, you know, I guess the water was clean enough for you to swim in, which is more than we could say for the river during the Olympics, where, you know, some of the swimmers got sick in the triathlon. Um, we're gonna talk more about the Olympics in a second. I think we understand why you're the marine director over here, but for those of our audience who maybe are not familiar with Siemens digital industry software, give us a, if you don't mind, tell us a little bit about that.

Yes, it's a quite a interesting segment of the, again, of the maritime industry and Siemens, Siemens business. So it's not about, um, building or producing the physical assets. It's about the software.

Because now there are a lot of opportunities to, to um, make, um, for instance, simulations the digital simulation of the real asset. So before, let's say building a plane or a vessel. So there is a very good opportunity to simulate this, to test in the digital environment, to find the best, uh, design the, the optimal design, um, to check against like different conditions, uh, different, let's say, uh, weather states, the sea states and so on, to find the real optimal, optimal point, and then build this actual vessel.

So it's kind of, it's a, now it's a, it's a part of the very well recognized design process, just, you know, to have like simulation and the, um, digital, you know, tests of the actual asset. And that's exactly what we do. So we developing the software for this, and I'm focusing on the maritime side.

So we collaborating with the shipyards, with the ship designers, with the classification societies to make sure that future designs of our vessels are the best ones. So I, I've heard this sort of process referred to as digital twinning, right? We make a digital twin of, of the real world, in this case a vessel.

It could be an airplane, could be a car building. And, and then with that digital twin of, of the in real life IRL, uh, uh, property, we can then test it in, in, in a virtual environment to, as you said, find out it's not just testing to see if a ship can go faster, safety issues, security issues. You know, there's a lot of places where we're using this digital twinning kind of technology today to, to improve things before we start investing a lot of money and manpower into actually building the physical structures.

So, excellent. If you don't mind, let's, let's talk about this Olympic story. So you guys, I guess partnered or, uh, team USA sailing and employed some Siemens digital industry, software technology.

Uh, and I'm not saying that's the reason they got a medal, but it didn't hurt, as they say. Right? You probably helped tell us a little bit about that.

So probably I should start with the, with the main challenge first, because obviously sailing been around us for thousands years, it's kinda, it's not, it's something like we already, um, have a very good knowledge and experience. So the challenge comes that now every year on early every race or competitions, so we are trying to push, you know, the boundaries. We're trying to do something better, better and better.

And at some point we realized that, okay, I think we achieved the maximum for the, um, uh, for the vessels actually sailing in the water because the resistance of the water, um, the base resistance actually quite high. And obviously you can get something of the wind power, you know, to, to move the vessel, but it still is quite a significant resistance. And then the next kind of level it was like, okay, what if we place the vessel out of the water so we have some sort of, you know, planning house or like, uh, uh, using hydrofoils, you know, to dynamically, um, put the vessel outta the water and then reduce the resistance, the way it resistance on that.

And it's, it's a great concept because obviously by doing that, you can achieve significantly higher speeds compared to the, um, to usual, uh, to usual boats, because obviously the, um, risk will be less, uh, wave resistance. And at the same time, you know, also it'll be like a very nice and light structures. The challenge is stability because once the vessel is set out of the motor, then the stability, uh, becomes a real challenge.

So you have to kind of maintain the position of this boat, which is not touching the water. It's only like a few, um, uh, hydrofoils is actually still in the water. And this is, well, it's a great challenge how to do that.

And these are like digital twin technologies, as you mentioned. It's exactly no design for this. So instead of try and have like, you know, um, uh, trial on the, on the actual vessel, on the actual boat, because it's, it might be quite a difficult experience to build, to move this hydro flows around to find the optimal position.

So you can use the digital environment for that. So you can test and find the best position, the best load, the best configuration and arrangement for these hydrofoils. And that's exactly what, what was done in the, um, US setting.

So they used our product, we supported them with that, and they used our product to find the, the best design, the, the optimal location of the hydrofoils and the, the optimal strategic, how to use those hydrofoils in order to know to not just to displace, well, not to put the vessel out of the water, but in order to control this in the right way, that the uh, um, the, the, uh, hydrofoils in the boats actually pretty stable and you can achieve very high results. So in that sense, it's quite an instant concept because it's a newly developed. So in the, for instance, in Tova Olympic gates in 2020, it's only, uh, was only one class with the hydrofoil.

So it was kind of a new concept. Now in this Olympic games in thousand 24, it's already five classes. So you see how it's gonna rapidly recognize and develop in the maritime industry.

And definitely in the future it'll be one of the major, um, uh, you know, advancement for the, for the sailing boats. And this is quite interesting, you know, combination of digital and real environment and how we can use those together. Absolutely.

You know, one thing about competitive athletics, any competition is one side is perceived to have an advantage by deploying a new technique or a new technology or something like that. Immediately it's a bit of a copycat league or a copycat sport where everyone will say, okay, I've gotta do that. 'cause it worked for them.

And so I'm wondering, have you already seen maybe other nations, other teams, other industries saying, Hey, this worked for them, we'd like to try it out here, or maybe it's too soon yet? It's a very good question because we, in the, because I mainly focus on the commercial shipping, you know, just imagine the, the container ship tankers, you know, the cruise liners, those kind of vessels. And obviously we are far away from the sailing competition in terms of the technologies, but at the same time, we are looking, you know, with a great attention about, you know, what's actually happening on the, um, sailing industry, on the, uh, on the racing, because this is exactly the learning curve that we would like to employ in our commercial shipping.

So it's, um, uh, those races, the sailing boats, it's kind of like a benchmark for us, you know, just to understand like, okay, where's the potential to improve the commercial shipping? Because in commercial shipping, unfortunately, um, it's very traditional. It's very, um, solid.

It's very difficult, you know, to move this technology very conservative. And that's why we need these, uh, smaller boats and yachts in order to understand, you know, for us to understand the, the potential, how to improve the commercial shipping. So that's why it's, it's a very interesting concept, and that's why we are very passionate about looking at the smaller boat and the folding boat and the usual digital technologies, digital twin for the, um, for the, for the boats in order to, you know, to use the same, uh, lesson learned for the commercial shipping.

Shipping. Absolutely. Dmitri, I, I think we spoke off camera.

You're based in London now of had, you know, from when you're royal, uh, your, your position with the royal, uh, service there. But, um, of course anyone around the world can engage Siemens digital industries and and anyone in the maritime industry. What, what website would be the best way to kind of engage, you think, or to get more information?

Yeah, so definitely again, I would refer to the digital environment because, uh, we have very well developed website and social media, so it's, everyone wanted to get in touch with us. So probably, um, website would be the, the, the best way forward or otherwise it would be, um, on the social media, like LinkedIn and somewhere, um, it'll be a good starting point. But the good point about Siemens, so we have offices literally in, in every country, so everywhere.

So definitely, yeah, definitely it'll be someone around nearby you who actually, you know, have some sort of connection with the, the Siemens. I love it. Dmitri, keep up exploring and doing these things you're doing.

It's what makes life exciting. Congratulations on the work of Siemens Digital Industries on this. I mean, this has, I mean, it's great that it's helped a team win a wor uh, an Olympic medal, but the applications here go far beyond that, obviously, and it'll be interesting to see how this continues to develop.

Thanks for being with us today on Textron tv. Thank you very much. Okay.

All righty, Dmitri re, REOV Marine Director Siemens Digital Industry software here on Tech Drug tv. We're gonna take a break. We'll be back in just a moment.