A (Travel) Report from Maritime Innovation Insights 2026 at Fraunhofer CML

2026-06-19

On 7 May 2026, the eighth edition of Maritime Innovation Insights took place at the Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services in Hamburg-Harburg. The annual event presents a selection of current Fraunhofer CML partner projects with a maritime focus. Under the title “Maritime systems in transition – intelligent, connected, resilient”, this year’s programme focused on the safety and resilience of maritime infrastructure, maritime situational awareness, autonomous systems, port technologies, and alternative navigation methods.

In addition to several other talks and demonstrations, the following contributions provided particularly interesting insights into current developments in the maritime domain.

DIEB: Threat monitoring for LNG terminals

One particularly relevant topic was the project DIEB, short for “Datengetriebene Identifizierung, Beurteilung und Adressierung von Gefährdungen für LNG-Terminals”. The project was presented by Mathias Lüdicke, Head of the Wilhelmshaven branch of Niedersachsen Ports. Using the LNG terminal in Wilhelmshaven as an example, the talk highlighted the security-related challenges associated with critical energy infrastructure. The terminal was built in 2022 in the context of the energy crisis intensified by the war in Ukraine, enabling the import of liquefied natural gas to Germany.

DIEB investigates how threats to such infrastructures can be identified, assessed, and addressed in a data-driven way. To this end, the project considers sensor systems at and around the terminal in order to monitor potential threats from different directions. These include land-side access routes, the water surface, underwater areas, and the airspace. Drone activity in particular was discussed as a current challenge for maritime and energy-related infrastructures. The motives behind such activity can range from intelligence gathering and show-of-force behaviour to testing existing security and response mechanisms.

The talk made clear that the challenge is not only technical detection. Legal response options, responsibilities, and coordination processes are equally important. Around such infrastructure, responsibilities can change at several points, making it difficult to bring all relevant stakeholders together effectively.

EMSIG: Autonomous SWATH vessels for offshore monitoring

Another highlight was the talk on “EMSIG” in real-time technology by Dipl.-Ing. Toralf Zimmermann, Director R&D and Innovation at Abeking & Rasmussen. Abeking & Rasmussen is a ship and yacht yard in Lemwerder near Bremen. The company builds megayachts, pilot boats, and minehunters up to around 130 metres in length. It is also one of the few manufacturers of SWATH vessels, meaning “Small Waterplane Area Twin Hulls”: https://www.abeking.com/swath-technologie/

SWATH vessels are a special type of catamaran. Instead of a large hull body at the water surface, they have two torpedo-shaped buoyancy bodies below the water surface. Compared to conventional monohull vessels, they remain much more stable in rough seas and are still manoeuvrable at higher speeds.

Another technical advantage is that turbulence and flow disturbances below the hull are reduced compared to monohulls. This allows measurement instruments installed at the front of the submerged buoyancy bodies to operate in a comparatively undisturbed measurement environment. The EMSIG project explores how autonomous SWATH platforms can be used to monitor offshore wind farms in the North Sea.

AIS high-performance antennas for maritime situational awareness

A third interesting contribution was the talk by Dr.-Ing. Carsten Hilgenfeld, Managing Director of Ship Monitor by JDS, on AIS high-performance antennas with optimized reception range as input data for maritime situational awareness systems.

AIS, the Automatic Identification System, is a radio-based system for exchanging navigation and vessel data. Ships above a certain size are required to operate AIS equipment on board. Platforms such as marinetraffic.com are based on AIS data.

Conventional AIS base stations usually receive signals only up to the horizon, corresponding to a radius of roughly 50 kilometres. Simply increasing receiver sensitivity is not sufficient, as signals can overlap when too many vessels are located within the extended reception area. A similar problem occurs with satellite-based AIS, where too many signals may be received from a very large area at once.

As a solution, a mobile AIS antenna system was presented that can be transported on a car trailer and deployed quickly and flexibly when needed. Under certain atmospheric conditions, AIS radio waves can be reflected beyond the horizon. This enables ranges of several hundred kilometres. For example, a system deployed in Hamburg could detect signals far into the North Sea and Baltic Sea, contributing to more comprehensive maritime situational awareness.

MoNaMe: Alternative navigation beyond GPS

Another particularly relevant talk addressed secure alternative navigation methods. Daniel Seybold, LL.M., Managing Director of TeleOrbit, presented the project MoNaMe, which stands for “Maritime Autonomous Navigation using Alternative Absolute Positioning Techniques”.

The project originated from a European Space Agency call for alternatives to GPS, particularly with regard to the vulnerability of GNSS systems to jamming or spoofing: https://navisp.esa.int/project/details/309/show

One approach was to technically revive historical navigation methods based on celestial bodies and sextants. For this purpose, an instrument unit was developed that can be mounted on ships with vibration isolation and essentially works like an automated sextant.

In practical use, however, this approach faces several limitations. It depends on visibility conditions, time of day, cloud cover, and a stable orientation of the vessel relative to the horizon. As a result, the achievable accuracy is in the range of several kilometres and is not sufficient for all application scenarios.

Building on the topic of alternative navigation, approaches based on nitrogen-vacancy quantum sensor systems were also presented: https://navisp.esa.int/project/details/391/show and https://teleorbit.eu/consultancy/projects/

These sensors work at room temperature and use atomic defects in diamonds to measure magnetic fields with very high precision and spatial resolution. For navigation applications, this technology becomes relevant when measured magnetic field trajectories are compared with maps of the Earth’s magnetic field or combined with other quantum sensing methods.

Overall, Maritime Innovation Insights 2026 demonstrated the breadth of current maritime research and development. The projects presented at the event showed that technological innovation in the maritime sector is closely linked to questions of resilience, safety, data integration and practical deployability.