What's up
Explore the world of remote navigation with Seafar
Recently graduated from UCLouvain, Juan Funes begins his professional career as a consultant at TMC with the role of R&D engineer at Seafar. The electromechanical engineer specialized in mechatronics works on the development of the situational awareness system. The start-up is integrating radar data into its object detection algorithms, which already rely on other sensors such as computer vision or AIS.
What is Seafar? We explain everything!
Today, there are barriers to the development of river logistics, notably the lack of manpower and captains. Additionally, the equipment on the boats is idle for more than 50% of the time. To solve this problem, Seafar offers remote navigation as a solution. Thanks to remote navigation, boats can navigate longer, allowing captains to have a more normal lifestyle. Today, forty boats are equipped with Seafar's innovative system, with onboard technology including fifteen cameras as well as 4G and 5G!
The primary goal of this development is, of course, to increase navigation safety. For example, the algorithms Juan develops provide perfect knowledge of everything surrounding the boat to generate warnings or alarms for all captains. Keep in mind that there are always experienced captains who control and choose the movements of the boat.
What are your organization's projects?
"Having several projects in Wallonia (NavAuWall and Lusta5G), it is important for us to be present there and have an office", Juan tells us.
"The goal of being present at A6K is also to have stations to navigate the Walloon waters, which is a major market for inland navigation. So what better way than to have a control center in Wallonia." "Being present at A6K also allows us to share ideas with other innovative Walloon technology players, to be close to the Walloon river actors, close to the industry, close to the clients." "Being present at A6K facilitates cooperation. These cooperations are essential to accelerate the development of innovative technologies."
Fun fact?
"We are the best in diversity with a team composed of people from all over the world!"
