New Funding to Advance Hull Cleaning and Inspection Robot Deployment
above and below the waterline and able to access confined spaces that are difficult for divers, allowing pinpoint location of defects and giving more data to perform accurate predictive maintenance analysis.The project is led by Halifax, NS-based Marine Thinking, in partnership with Innvotek and Innovate UK, both in London, England. Canada’s Ocean Supercluster is investing $330, 560 with the balance of funding coming from project partners
EU’s Go-Ahead Brings $22M Wave Energy Scheme Step Closer to Offshore Deployment
involving 14 partners across offshore energy industry and academia, has received a formal go-ahead from the European Union, bringing the developers one step closer to the deployment of 1 MW wave energy device offshore Scotland.Co-funded by the EU Horizon Europe Program and UK’s innovation agency Innovate UK, the $22 million (€19.6 million) WEDUSEA project has undergone a comprehensive independent review by EU appointed external experts following its initial project design period to ensure the technical designs and all plans, budgets and protocols are fully in place and approved.Having received
UK-Canada Backed OASIS Project Set to Streamline Marine Environmental Surveys
, has brought together a consortium of companies, backed by the funding from the U.K. and Canadian governments, to address the limitations of existing ocean monitoring methods.Funded by Canada’s Ocean Supercluster’s UK Collaborative Ocean Innovation Solutions program, in partnership with Innovate UK, this initiative aims to revolutionize marine environmental surveys through the collaboration of Canadian and UK ocean technology experts.The OASIS Project aims to address the pressing need for efficient and cost-effective monitoring solutions in the face of escalating demands for sustainable
USVs to Collect Water Pollution Data in SW England Pilot
A consortium of British marine technology companies has secured Innovate UK funding to deploy non-invasive uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) for water quality monitoring in three key South West regional ports; Dartmouth, Falmouth and Plymouth.Led by Somerset-based marine acoustic monitoring experts, MSeis, the ‘Smart Ports, Clean Waters’ project partners aim to transform public understanding of water ecosystems in ports and harbours in the South West of England by providing broad range, accessible data relating to pollution in the region’s rivers and estuaries. MSeis will be supported
World’s First Floating Wind Innovation Centre Opens
Transition Zone, ORE Catapult’s £9 million National Floating Wind Innovation Centre (FLOWIC), delivered in collaboration with ETZ Limited, is designed to help supercharge the development of floating offshore wind technology in the UK, with funding from both the Scottish Government and Innovate UK.Floating offshore wind represents a huge economic opportunity, with more than 19GW of potential projects in the pipeline through the ScotWind Leasing process, a new leasing round on the horizon in the Celtic Sea, and the prospect of transferring skills and knowledge from oil and gas to aid the
Partners Developing Underwater Single Photon Imaging System
A consortium of universities and technology companies led by marine technology company Sonardyne is working to develop a groundbreaking underwater single photon mapping and imaging system. The partners have been awarded £2.7 million in funding from the Innovate UK Commercializing Quantum Technologies Challenge.The revolutionary underwater single photon imaging system (USPIS) project will develop next generation technology and equipment capable of delivering wide area coverage and high-resolution 3D images in all underwater environments.The consortium brings together decades of expertise and
HydroSurv Funded to Commercialize Robotic Seagrass Solution
HydroSurv, a provider of electric and hybrid uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), secured Innovate UK funding to commercialize an end-to-end seagrass monitoring solution with support from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).The project aims to provide a rapidly scalable, low-impact and comprehensive answer to the numerous challenges of monitoring seagrass meadows by combining HydroSurv USV platforms with an automated data processing toolchain. The robotic solution will be demonstrated over spring and summer 2024 at three designated worksites on the south west coast of
AI & Seabed Mapping Project Recognized
noise from sonar data. This was carried out by two MSc Computing Science students, supervised by Dr. Wenjia Wang and Dr. Ben Milner, and a team from GeoAcoustics.Following encouraging results, further R&D grants were awarded; an Enabling Innovation: Research To Application (EIRA) award, and an Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP). These enabled an AI module to be developed which was then evaluated using various benchmark data sets and sea trials.This established that the AI was able to produce accurate and consistent results comparable to that of an experienced surveyor, without needing
How AI Can Aid Coastal Water Quality Monitoring
Interface (GUI). The goal is to narrow the set of parameters that are needed to model predictions for high coliform events, thereby reducing the cost of monitoring and evaluating these events, and enabling more systems to be deployed in increased locations longer term.The project is being funded by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, in conjunction with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as part of a series of innovation projects that can improve the observation capabilities of the UK’s waters, towards improved assessment and evaluation of the status and
February 2025
