Fraunhofer Center for Assistive Information and Communication Solutions – AICOSFraunhofer AICOS and the company Ponto.C are developing a new technological solution that aims to increase the safety in nautical activities, focusing on fishing communities and watersports athletes, such as sailing and windsurf sportsmen.
This solution is based on smartphones and external sensors coupled to vessels, to easily obtain information about their positioning, their routes and increase the level of security on the practice of nautical activities. For the water sports sportsmen, it will also allow them to obtain water sports performance information.
The information will be processed in real-time by an independent alarm management framework, which will allow the detection of abnormal events that might generate an alert, such as, a boat that is upside down, a boater who is moving away from his boat, etc., and that this framework can be used by nautical sports organization entities (sailing clubs, yatch clubs) or by fishing communities wishing to ensure the highest levels security for their members. In the case of watersports, the solution will additionally display performance metrics that can be shared with coaches and colleagues and used to improve training techniques.
This project relies also on the collaboration of several Portuguese entities, namely: Direcção-Geral da Autoridade Marítima (DGAM), Portugal Telecom (PT), Sporting Clube de Aveiro, Clube de Vela da Costa Nova and Associação Náutica da Gafanha da Encarnação.