The new SafeNav (Safer Navigation) maritime safety project, co-funded by the European Commission and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to the tune of €8 million, has officially launched, with the aim or researching and developing navigation technologies for remote operations and autonomous shipping.
The objective of the project is to develop and test a collision-prevention system that can significantly reduce the probability of collisions and groundings, to improve navigation for existing vessels and new generations of future ships designed with autonomy in mind.
“The SafeNav project is an exciting opportunity to make a major contribution to the maritime sector,” said Capt. Lance Savaria, Head of Projects at Offshore Monitoring Ltd (OSM), which will oversee management, coordination and overall technical development of the three-year project.
“With the support of a strong consortium, the next few years will be full of dynamic collaboration and hands-on research and development to tackle the issue of navigational accidents at sea with an innovative digital solution.”
The system will consist of a module for automated collision prevention and avoidance, complemented by a decision-support module providing a visual representation for navigators of multi-source data harvested from sensors and other relevant sources.
The consortium includes Ladar Ltd (UK), SAYFR (Norway), Offshore Monitoring Ltd (Cyprus), Naval Group subsidiary Sirehna (France), Danaos Shipping Co (Greece), Global Maritime Services (UK) and Greenov-ITES (France).
R&D institutes and universities that will participate in the technical development of algorithms for SafeNav include Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum (IMEC) in Belgium, University of Rijeka (UNIRI) in Croatia and the University of Genova (UNIGE) in Italy.
