The research project Improvedo did the initial design and development of the Ratatosk software. Its main goal was to develop the skills and tools that can contribute to more energy efficient operation and design of the vessel, by developing:

• Strategies and tools to aggregate operational data
• Key figures in relation to the operation of vessels
• Systems for operational decision support
• Numerical methods and tools for optimization of ship design

Today's vessels are complex and gives the skipper many choices related to how the vessel is operated. Typical choices are which engines are running, vessel speed, how the energy is distributed, the use of electric motors for propulsion or direct coupling, propeller pitch, etc. The complexity and nonlinearity of these systems makes them difficult to model with suffifient accuracy to give good advise. This project therefore based its advise mainly on long term measurements and statistics, and the resulting advise was able to take into account the current electricity consumption, speed, weather and vessel loading. Ratatosk was used for communication with the ship systems and provide a common interface which the decision support system could use. This made it possible to deploy the same software on four different ships without ship-specific adaptations.

In purse seine fisheries, synchronous hauling of the ground and top rope is important to avoid damage to the net. For this reason, a system monitoring the net hauling has bin devised. The system is based on bluetooth tags and three detection units, and the operator is presented with a view of the hauling process. Ratatosk is used for managing the running processes of the system, data logging and configuration.

SMARTFISH H2020 is an international research project which aims to develop, test and promote a suite of high-tech systems for the EU fishing sector. The goal is to optimize resource efficiency, improve automatic data collection for fish stock assessment, provide evidence of compliance with fishery regulations and reduce the ecological impact of the industry. Ratatosk provides interface to ship systems and catch monitoring systems.

Sustuntech is developing a compact and cost-effective system to improve the energy efficiency of tuna fishing vessels. Advanced vessel monitoring, Copernicus data and machine learning will be combined to propose strategies to improve the detection of fish distribution, reduce time at sea, save fuel and better route planning. The project integrate and develop Ratatosk and other existing technologies into existing commercial and pre-commercial products that can later be applied to other types of fishing vessels or even other shipping industries. Ratatosk is the chosen platform for interfacing ship systems and data acquisition.

A work package of the "Catch control in purse seine" project focused on creating algorithms and graphical decision support applications to aid the captain before deployment. Keywords in this regard is vessel positioning, timing of deployment initiation, and sinking speed under different conditions. Ratatosk was used to collect data and for sharing data between program modules.