Engineering, research and the sea.
Digital Vessel comes from a mix of skills that rarely work together: naval architecture, seagoing experience, computing, telecommunications, cybersecurity, embedded electronics and university research. We've put our crew together and got everyone in the same boat.
Where we come from
Digital Vessel started life inside Acqua Yachts, the yard Michele founded to build innovative pleasure boats. The system was designed and proven first on the prototype we built ourselves, before we ever offered it to another yard. Riccardo joined as co-founder to take the project independent in the market.
Why we took this on
We've spent enough time on boats, and enough time on the systems that run them, to see the same problem from several angles: boats have got more complicated faster than their data has got any easier to read. That's the starting point we chose to work from.
Two trades, two teams
Acqua Yachts was set up to build boats. Digital Vessel was set up to build the technology that goes with them. They're two different trades, so we run them with two separate teams. For a partner yard, that means something simple: working with a specialist supplier that knows the trade well, not a competitor. Its clients, its data and its brand stay its own.
With BioNIRS
The project is developed in joint research with BioNIRS, a prospective spin-off of the University of Palermo. Part of the work on onboard electronics and data-analysis models comes out of this collaboration, and it's one of the reasons some technical choices are validated before they're built.
How we work
At sea first, slides second.
What we offer, we test and validate on real boats before we put it forward.
We say what's there and what isn't yet.
Every page aimed at the market separates what works today from what's in development.
We build with the people who'll use it.
Boatbuilders, fleets and refit yards who come aboard at this stage become development partners, not just clients.
We're hiring
We're building a system that lives on real boats, where a mistake isn't just a bug: it's a problem at sea. Anyone working on embedded systems, real-time electronics, data or interfaces, who fancies problems that bring together software, hardware and the sea, is welcome to get in touch.