Uncrewed Marine Vehicles
Discover cutting-edge solutions from 18 leading global suppliers
The Port of Barcelona has hosted a pilot testing of an aquatic drone designed and manufactured by GPASEABOTS, a GPAINNOVA company, in an event at the Drassanes dock.
It is a joint project between the Catalan infrastructure and the company to create an aquatic drone ready to meet the port’s need.
The drone model used, the SB 100 PRO, is an agile, small-scale marine drone that can carry out all types of works, and claims to have some advantages over conventional unmanned surface vehicles (USVs):
- Its cost-effectiveness, without involving human risk
- Its speed of movement
- Its ease of use and the fact of being environmentally friendly
- The advantage of providing data in real time to professionals on land
Thus, the SB 100 PRO is a versatile and multifunctional platform, which allows automating tasks and accessing high-risk areas.
GPASEABOTS explained that this joint project with the Port of Barcelona is a good example of the collaboration that the company is committed to, in order to provide services and to establish a cooperation that facilitates the design of an unmanned, bespoke and customized surface vehicle.
The company was founded in 2019 with the goal of making maritime tasks easier and safer. It specializes in designing, manufacturing and distributing USVs such as the SB 100 PRO. GPASEABOTS has two new projects underway that are expected to be ready by the end of 2021.
Pau Guasch, GPASEABOTS Co-Founder & Manager, said; “The SB 100 PRO is a multipurpose platform that, depending on the instrumentation, can be applied in areas such as hydrography, water analytics, inspection, SAR, surveillance, and cleaning.
“All these tasks can be carried out automatically by a single operator, who is monitoring the obtained data in real time on land.”
The Head of Environment at the Port of Barcelona, Jordi Vila, said that the project is “a first step to advance towards the automation of field work, while allowing to deepen the knowledge of the marine environment in a way very different from the current one.”
He also highlighted that the tool will serve to “accurately monitor the quality of port waters, taking real-time parameter values, assisting in the response process in case of sewage discharges, river water and wastewater surveillance at the docks, and sediments monitoring, among others.”
