Context

Ramp Assist is a mobile app developed for ZF to enhance the boating experience with advanced navigation and docking assistance. Before departure, it helps users select the optimal boat ramp by analyzing satellite data, predicted peak hours, and user feedback. When returning, the app—mounted near the captain’s viewing area—provides real-time steering guidance, ensuring the boat’s bow smoothly aligns with the trailer for a stress-free docking process.

Estimating boat ramp popularity required processing large-scale data from satellite imagery, webcams, and cellular signals across 20,000+ boat ramps. This generated millions of data points daily, making efficient analysis essential. To address this, TSL developed a high-performance data processing pipeline that filters out noise—such as cell phone pings from passing traffic—to focus only on relevant activity.

To provide precise and adaptive docking assistance, Ramp Assist combines real-time boat ramp tracking with multiple data sources to generate accurate steering instructions. Using a custom-trained model on over 10,000 images, the app continuously identifies and tracks the boat ramp, ensuring stable recognition even in changing environmental conditions—all while running on a standard smartphone with no additional hardware.

By intelligently combining and validating these inputs, Ramp Assist provides smooth, real-time steering assistance, making boat docking effortless and precise.