BRIGANTINE Drone Demonstration

At 12:30 PM on 28th May, 2026, at the Scali dock in the Venice Arsenale, you will have the opportunity to observe the BRIGANTINE project’s surface drones in the water. We’re waiting for you!

Required registration here

The BRIGANTINE project will be presented during the workshop scheduled for 10 am on the same day.

The sea hides forests we rarely see.
Silent meadows of seagrass and algae that breathe life into our planet. These submerged ecosystems are biodiversity hotspots, oxygen factories, and natural carbon sinks. Yet they remain among the least monitored and most threatened environments on Earth.

The sea’s submerged forests are vanishing silently, but technology gives us a chance to listen before it’s too late.

It is in this context that the european BRIGANTINE project was born, developing a new generation of autonomous surface launch vehicles (ASV) offering the tools needed to protect, restore, and sustain these fragile ecosystems for generations to come.

BRIGANTINE’s drone is a sentinel, a watchful eye beneath the waves, reminding us that what lies unseen is often what matters most.

The project, funded under the Interreg Italy-Croatia 2021-2027 program with a total budget of €1,716,987, involves five italian and croatian research institutions: the University of Udine (lead partner), the Polytechnic University of Marche, the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Rovinj, the University of Zagreb, and CORILA, the Consortium for the Coordination of Research on the Venice Lagoon System.

A new era in marine monitoring
BRIGANTINE — short for Chemico-Physical and Multispectral Data Fusion for Adriatic Sea Monitoring by autonomous vessel — is a project born out of necessity. In the Adriatic Sea, where vast seagrass beds and algal meadows support rich ecosystems, traditional monitoring techniques have struggled to keep pace with the rapid environmental change.
Scientists have long relied on scuba divers, stationary sensors, and sporadic satellite data to study these habitats. But such methods are labour-intensive, spatially limited, and unable to deliver continuous, real-time data. BRIGANTINE changes this paradigm by using a fully Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV) equipped with an array of advanced imaging and sensing technologies.