The Port of Barcelona hosted yesterday a pilot testing of an aquatic drone designed and manufactured by GPASEABOTS, a GPAINNOVA company, in an event that took place 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, has some advantages over conventional ones: Its cost-effectiveness, without involving human risk; its speed of movement; its ease of use and the fact of being environmentally friendly, as well as the advantage of providing data in real time to those professionals who are on land. Thus, the SB 100 PRO becomes a versatile and multifunctional platform, which allows automating tasks and accessing high-risk areas.
According to Pau Guasch, GPASEABOTS co-founder and manager: «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», he stated.
In this sense, the Head of Environment at the Port of Barcelona, Jordi Vila, highlighted 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 underlined: «We are convinced that this new tool will open up a new way of approaching the marine environment, which will help us make port activities as respectful as possible». From the Head of Environment’s view, this tool will serve to «accurately monitoring 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».
During the pilot testing, Pau Sarsanedas, co-founder and CEO at GPAINNOVA, expressed his satisfaction with the event: «GPASEABOTS becomes a successful reality, with a differentiated technology from the rest of the group's divisions, but with evident and essential synergies which are only possible thanks to the concept of a multidisciplinary technological platform»
From GPASEABOTS, they explained that this joint project with the Port of Barcelona is a good example of the aim of collaboration that the company is committed to when working, in order to provide services and to establish, from the beginning, a cooperation that allows designing an unmanned, bespoke and customized surface vehicle
GPASEABOTS was founded in 2019 with the goal of making maritime tasks easier and safer. The company specializes in designing, manufacturing and distribution of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) such as the SB 100 PRO: An agile, small-scale marine drone that can carry out all types of works. GPASEABOTS has two new projects underway that are expected to be ready by the end of 2021.
Comments