In a world where self-driving cars are starting to become ubiquitous, why shouldn’t we expect to see fleets of self-driving ships? That is indeed the vision of Mirai Robotics, an Italian start-up that is today announcing it has raised $4.2 million of pre-seed financing as it scales up its development and commercialisation of autonomous and intelligent maritime systems.
“The ocean plays a huge role in our global economy, but it’s also a hugely vulnerable domain,” says Luciano Belviso, Mirai’s CEO, who co-founded the business last year with Luca Mascaro, now chief product and technology officer, and Davide Dattoli, another director. “A fully human-centric model is struggling to sustain continuous, safe and scalable operations.”
