The SeaClear project, in which the University of Dubrovnik is a partner, won first place in the category ‘Contribution to Education, Science and Innovation’ at the award ceremony for the best EU projects as part of the Days of Regional Development and EU Funds, which took place from 4th to 6th December in Šibenik. The award was received by the Prefect of Dubrovnik-Neretva, Nikola Dobroslavić.
The project was implemented from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2023 and it introduced significant innovations in the fight against marine pollution by developing autonomous robots to detect and collect marine debris from the seabed. The project coordinator is the Technical University of Delft, and in addition to other partners, Croatian partners were DUNEA and the University of Dubrovnik. The SeaClear project was funded under the prestigious European Commission funding program H2020-Research and Innovation Action, number 871295. The SeaClear project consortium consisted of 8 partners from 5 countries: Technical University of Delft (Netherlands, project coordinator), DUNEA Regional Agency (Croatia), Fraunhofer Institute CML (Germany); Hamburg – Port Authority (Germany), Subsea Tech (France), Technical University of Munich (Germany), Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (Romania) and University of Dubrovnik (Croatia).
Due to its importance, the European Commission has approved the continuation of the project in the form of the new SeaClear 2.0 project , which started in 2023, funded under the HORIZON-Innovation Action program. In addition to continuing work on the development of the autonomous robotic system for collecting debris from the seabed and sea surface, SeaClear 2.0 also aims to activate and empower local communities through gamified actions and work with them to develop recommendations to address policy gaps in dealing with the problem of marine litter.
The consortium consists of 13 partners from 9 countries. In addition to the original 8 partners from the SeaClear project, the consortium has been expanded with 5 more partners who are experts in various fields of activity: Technical University of Delft (Netherlands, project coordinator), DUNEA Regional Agency (Croatia), Fraunhofer Institute (Germany); Hamburg – Port Authority (Germany), Isotech (Cyprus), M.Danchor (Israel), Subsea Tech (France), Técnicas y Obras Subacuáticas (TECNOSUB) (Spain), Technical University of Munich (Germany), University of Dubrovnik (Croatia), Technical University of Cluj-Napoca (Romania), Veolia (France) and Venice Lagoon Plastic Free (Italy).
The principal investigator (PI) of both projects at UNIDU is prof. Ivana Palunko, head of the Laboratory for Intelligent Autonomous Systems (LARIAT) from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Applied Computing, whose research team contributes to the technological development of systems in the field of robotics, artificial intelligence and automatic control. In addition to the research team from LARIAT, researchers from the Department of Applied Ecology and the Faculty of Economics, University of Dubrovnik are also participating in the project contributing with their specific set of expertise.
