Artificial Intelligence at Sea: GATV Successfully Deploys Technologies in the SMAUG Project Final Demonstrator at the Port of Valencia

On June 17, 2026, the Grupo de Aplicación de Telecomunicaciones Visuales (GATV) achieved a major technical milestone within the framework of the European project SMAUG. The group’s research team relocated to the Port of Valencia to take a leading role in the project’s final use case and demonstrator. This field exercise successfully validated advanced port-security infrastructure before security agencies and European stakeholders, as documented in the consortium group picture.

🚢 Edge-Cutting Technologies Deployed on the Field

The technical contribution of the Grupo de Aplicación de Telecomunicaciones Visuales (GATV) centered around implementing Artificial Intelligence solutions tailored for threat detection in distributed critical environments. The on-site team, represented by researcher Anaida Fernández García, successfully spearheaded two complex operational scenarios:

  • Passive Acoustic Detection: Deployment of advanced underwater sensing hardware utilizing hydrophones to monitor, capture, and isolate potential underwater threats within the port boundaries.
  • Aerial Computer Vision: Field-testing applied AI algorithms for visual detection and real-time classification embedded within aerial drones.

🎯 Key Use Cases and Technology Transfer

The live operational drills tackled two high-complexity simulations with outstanding performance in automatic detection and classification:

  1. Open-sea interception: Detecting and tracking an unidentified vessel in open water from a customs patrol boat.
  2. Suspicious entry monitoring: Early, automatic tracking of unauthorized incursions directly from the shore facilities at the Port of Valencia.

This technical success highlights the solid potential of GATV‘s custom AI pipelines regarding port safety and critical infrastructure resilience, smoothing the path for direct technology transfer into the industrial maritime sector and future international defense frameworks.