News
The SUONO Project will participate in OMC 2021, the event dedicated to the offshore energy industry to be held in Ravenna from 28 to 30 September 2021.
Safety at work at great depth, which is the primary objective of the SUONO Project, is one of the crucial points for the industries in the sector that have already shown great interest in the proposed solutions.
In the framework of the SUONO project, a new concept of reconfigurable underwater vehicle has been developed. Taking into account the mission to be carried out, it can alternatively possess excellent hydrodynamic characteristics in order to be able to quickly perform surveys on wide seabed areas and equally excellent hovering capabilities, i.e., the ability to keep stationary even in the presence of disturbances, such as those induced by the currents or by the proximity to the sea surface in the presence of wave motion. These characteristics of task-adaptation make this type of vehicle suitable for carrying out both survey tasks and close inspection and intervention tasks of submerged structures. The Italian patent (n. 102018000007463) entitled “Underwater vehicle with variable configuration” was filed (in 2018) and granted. Owner: University of Florence. Inventors: Benedetto Allotta, Jonathan Gelli, Marco Pagliai and Alessandro Ridolfi. The International evaluation phase of the PCT application has been successfully completed (PCT/IB2019/056266, WO 2020/021442 A1) and filing is currently underway in some countries, including USA and Korea.
Contacts
Benedetto Allotta – University of Florence – DIEF
benedetto.allotta@unifi.it
The SUONO Project is funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research in the framework of the call on Smart Cities and Communities - Topic on Marine Technologies (2014 - 2021)
With the participation of the Ministry of the Environment and the Tuscany Region
