The Madrid-based startup smartHAPS, recently incorporated into the Madrid Science Park Foundation (FPCM), has presented its stratospheric platform at the conference “Maritime Surveillance in the Western Mediterranean,” held on January 16 at the facilities of the Port Authority of Valencia.
The event was organized by the Valenciaport Foundation with the aim of sharing initiatives being carried out in this area and improving coordination among the various entities involved in maritime surveillance activities. Representatives from various public administrations participated in the conference: Civil Guard, Navy, INTA, SASEMAR, State Ports, Generalitat Valenciana, and Denia City Council, as well as research centers and companies developing technologies applicable to this sector.
The solution proposed by smartHAPS is based on a low-cost stratospheric platform that allows obtaining high-resolution images continuously over port, coastal, and maritime areas with the advantage of being able to recover the platform periodically for maintenance and improvement tasks.
According to the company, this type of solution combines the advantages of drones and satellites simultaneously and avoids some of the associated problems, such as improved operation time compared to drones or the elimination of revisit time in relation to a satellite. The goal is to have an additional source of information that complements the others mentioned and, thanks to its low latency, can help in rapid decision-making in maritime surveillance, security, and defense applications.
In addition to the applications mentioned above, there are others such as those related to crops, pollution control, search and rescue, and, in general, any remote sensing application that requires high-resolution data in real-time for extended periods.
Smarthaps is incubated in ESA BIC Comunidad de Madrid, the European Space Agency’s Incubation Center co-funded by the Community of Madrid and managed by the Foundation for Knowledge madri+d. Smarthaps’ facilities are located in one of the nodes of ESA BIC Comunidad de Madrid, specifically in the Madrid Science Park Foundation (FPCM). Both the Foundation for Knowledge madri+d and the FPCM are members of the Enterprise Europe Network, the largest (worldwide) network supporting SMEs with an internationalization vocation, with the Foundation for Knowledge madri+d being the coordinating entity of the EEN Network contact point in Madrid (EEN madrimasd).
