Four projects supported by the Marine & Maritime High Tech Incubator, selected by the Spanish Ports 4.0 funding programme
The second call from the Plan to Promote Entrepreneurship for Innovation in the Port Sector (Ports 4.0) being promoted by the Spanish ports authority (Puertos del Estado) will finance 30 pre-commercial projects throughout the country, of which eight are backed by the Port Authority of Las Palmas. Four of these projects, which have obtained a combined total of close on 1.4 million euros between them, received advice from the Economic Promotion Agency of Gran Canaria (SPEGC) - a body run by the Island Council of Gran Canaria - under the specialised service offered by the Marine & Maritime High Tech Incubator to help Spanish companies and startups in the maritime and naval sector gain access to this funding initiative.
The Silex project presented by Apsu Agua Limpia S.L. aims to develop a prototype microwave reactor capable of absorbing combustion gases from ship engines and transforming them into salts with a neutral impact on the environment, thereby reducing the greenhouse gas emissions produced by seagoing vessels.
The Carbon Wave Gauge project by Vázquez Torres Ingeniería, S.L. and Automation Designs and Custom Applications, S.L. seeks to develop a portable system for precisely measuring swell and tides in real time using carbon fibre threads.
In turn, the Beta-Blue project by Tiamet Energy S.L. will develop undimotor (wave) power prototypes for installation on maritime buoyage systems. The company will also make use of spaces owned by the Port Authority to test the system in a real environment.
The fourth project to have received funding from this call for proposals is Smart Coast AI Solutions 4.0 by the consortium set up by QAISC (Qualitas Artificial Intelligence and Science, S.A) and Plocan. The project aims to design and develop new technology solutions applied to the coast and port-maritime space based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) capable of efficiently and sustainably automating maritime transport.
Gran Canaria offers the ideal maritime-marine ecosystem for developing a wide range of productive and business activities related to this sector: ship repair, port services, power generation, logistics, transport and off-shore services are just some of the areas in which data analytics and artificial intelligence technology solutions are playing a major role.
Against that backdrop, the High-Tech Incubator for Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence applied to the maritime-marine environment promoted by the Island Council of Gran Canaria via SPEGC is a benchmark centre in Spain that supports entrepreneurs and SMEs engaged in innovative projects tied to these fields of technology. It offers technical support and technological-business guidance through integrated incubation and acceleration programmes, custom advice and consultancy, workshops, testing and experimentation opportunities in real environments, cloud computing services and work spaces, among other things.