Fincantieri has announced that its SEASTEMA subsidiary will be taking the lead in the MARIN Project (Integrated Marine Environmental Monitoring) for the development of unmanned ship.
Regione Puglia, within the Italian “Contratto di Programma” that supports research and innovation activities for medium and large companies, has approved the project with a total investment of about 6 million euros over three years.

According to Fincantieri, MARIN will work on the conceptual definition of a multi-functional unmanned marine platform that integrates and coordinates aerial and underwater drones in a coastal monitoring scenario for environmental safety and littoral security operations.

The platform will be remotely managed through a control station and with the help of an advanced decision support system.

The company stated that the enabling technologies will be developed and verified through sea tests on a so-called technological demonstrator, which will consist of a package of sensors and control systems implemented on an existing naval platform with a length of about 20 meters. in order to allow remote monitoring and control from a ground operator station.

The activities related to the project will take place in Lecce under the coordination of SEASTEMA, which will develop the automatic control, decision support and sensor data fusion logics required to provide the tools for complete management and situational awareness of the vehicle to the remote operator.

Fincantieri stated that MARIN will allow SEASTEMA to consolidate and further develop its technological expertise in the field of autonomous vessels with the goal to create a center of excellence in Lecce for one of the maritime sectors with the strongest growth prospects, thanks to the support of the Puglia Region and other partners.

Alessandro Concialini, CEO of SEASTEMA, commented: “We strongly believe in the development of unmanned ships and we are particularly proud to put our experience and know-how at the service of such a challenging project that could be the driving force and a boost factor for industrial innovation in this area and beyond. Thanks to these initiatives SEASTEMA will strengthen its technological leadership in a very competitive sector”.