SEA.AI’s Watchkeeper Wins Prestigious DAME Award, Revolutionizing Maritime Safety
SEA.AI’s Watchkeeper, an AI-powered modular surveillance platform, has been recognized with a special mention by the DAME (Design Award METS) jury. This prestigious award highlights the platform’s innovative design and its potential to significantly improve maritime safety.
Enhanced Situational Awareness Through AI
The DAME jury lauded Watchkeeper for its ability to enhance situational awareness by alerting users to floating hazards, persons overboard, and marine mammals. The system utilizes 4K night vision and optional thermal vision, making SEA.AI’s proven technology more accessible and compact, thus reaching a broader audience.
How Watchkeeper Works
Encased in a compact, weatherproof housing (110×163×86 mm, approximately 1 kg), Watchkeeper employs optical and thermal sensors to detect objects at varying distances:
- Persons overboard or buoys: up to 220 meters
- Small boats: up to 950 meters
- Pleasure boats: up to 2.5 km
- Large ships: up to the horizon (depending on configuration)
Designed for seamless integration and intuitive use, Watchkeeper transmits real-time alerts directly to the helm display, bridge, or a portable device, providing continuous maritime surveillance. With models starting from €4,490 excluding VAT, this system makes professional-grade visual safety accessible to a wider range of boaters.
SEA.AI CEO’s Perspective
“Receiving a special mention for the DAME Award is an immense honor,” said Marcus Warrelmann, CEO of SEA.AI. “This recognition confirms the relevance of our mission: to make advanced computer vision accessible to all boaters. Watchkeeper demonstrates that artificial intelligence can contribute concretely and measurably to safety at sea by helping to prevent collisions, detect persons overboard, and even protect marine wildlife.”
Warrelmann added, “Being in competition with some of the most experienced electronics brands in the industry is a testament to the considerable progress made in the field of maritime computer vision and the exceptional work accomplished by our teams. This award recognizes years of development, testing, and collaboration. With Watchkeeper, we prove that AI-based vision can be both accessible and effective for the protection of people and oceans.”
Since winning the Innovation Route award at the Cannes Yachting Festival and recognition at the MRH Innovation & Sustainability Awards during the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, Watchkeeper has quickly gained traction with major shipyards and equipment manufacturers, who are now integrating SEA.AI systems as standard equipment on their new vessels. Its modular design allows for installations ranging from a single low-light camera to complete optical and thermal three-camera configurations, supported by a rapidly expanding global network of distributors and services.
The Technology Behind SEA.AI’s Performance
SEA.AI’s performance is based on a continuously trained convolutional neural network (CNN) specifically optimized for maritime environments. Since 2018, SEA.AI has built one of the world’s largest annotated maritime vision datasets, now containing over 20 million real-world images collected in oceans, along coastlines, in ports, and on real-world testing platforms. The CNN analyzes each pixel of incoming thermal and optical video streams, learning to distinguish subtle shapes, thermal signatures, and movements of buoys, debris, ships, people in the water, and even whales. Each new dataset improves classification accuracy and reduces false positives, allowing Watchkeeper to adapt to complex real-world conditions such as glare, spray, darkness, and cluttered coastal backgrounds.
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