Fincantieri drives maritime security with hackathon victory and underwater monitoring partnership

Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri hosted a two‑day Maritime Security Hackathon in which more than 70 participants, including naval engineers and startup teams, developed minimum‑viable prototypes for multi‑domain autonomous vehicle coordination. The first prize was awarded to Lares Technologies for a solution that integrates underwater, surface and aerial vehicles using AI, VR, sensors and radar to protect critical maritime infrastructure.

Separately, Fincantieri and energy giant Eni signed a strategic agreement granting Fincantieri’s subsidiary IDS an exclusive worldwide licence to commercialise Eni’s Clean Sea system. Clean Sea is a robotic sub‑sea platform capable of both remote‑controlled and autonomous operation for tasks such as water sampling, high‑resolution visual inspection and 3‑D acoustic mapping. The partnership aims to scale the technology for offshore inspection, carbon‑capture‑and‑storage monitoring and other transition‑energy applications, merging IDS’s unmanned‑systems expertise with Eni’s sensor suite.