Italy hosts Sea Drone Tech Summit 2026 in Ostia

The fifth edition of the Sea Drone Tech Summit, a national congress on marine drones, will take place on November 5-6 at the Roma Tre University Ostia Campus. The event aims to present the current state of civil and military applications for marine robots, including seabed exploration, environmental monitoring, and underwater infrastructure maintenance.

Participants include representatives from the Italian Navy, Carabinieri, Coast Guard, and Guardia di Finanza, alongside academic institutions from Rome, Florence, Padua, and Calabria. Major industry players such as Fincantieri, Leonardo, and Saipem are expected to attend. The summit will feature an exhibition area and demonstrations in both tanks and open sea, as well as the preview of a PwC Strategy& Italy research report on the global and domestic marine robotics market.

In related technological developments, the TWOPIT team has successfully demonstrated underwater digital communication. During experimental activities in the Port of Catania, the team achieved the transmission of a digital photograph across a 50-meter distance at a depth of two meters. This patented Italian technology uses a unique modulation method to encode information within the amplitude of acoustic signals, aiming to eventually enable underwater video transmission.