by Maximiliano Crocamo
Interviews: Edoardo Rixi, Italy’s deputy minister for Transportation; Cristina Amirante, FVG councilor for Infrastructure and Territory; Luca Zambarbieri, CEO of Taverna; Yurij Bean, head of building team; Nick Sloane, Maritime salvage expert
Along the historic Molo Settimo — a 50-year-old, 600,000-square-meter structure in the Port of Trieste — a new chapter in maritime infrastructure has begun. A 32-meter-long floating platform has been positioned beside the pier, equipped with two large robotic arms that will operate underwater to carry out cleaning and maintenance beneath the docks.
The system, known as RoboGo, represents a significant investment in underwater robotics and artificial intelligence. Designed to carry out complex restoration work below sea level, the platform combines mechanical precision with a machine-learning “brain” currently trained on a dataset of 1,500 underwater images. As it operates, the AI system is expected to improve and adapt to the unique needs of the environment.
The project is led by a consortium headed by ICOP, a construction firm based in Basiliano, in the Friuli region. The total investment amounts to €22 million, and the development of the underwater robot involved 85 suppliers and more than 350,000 hours of work.
Luca Zambarbieri, CEO of Taverna, is overseeing the broader redevelopment of Molo Settimo. Yurij Bean is leading the construction of the RoboGo system, while Vittorio Petrucco of ICOP is coordinating the overall project.
The effort is seen as a step toward modernizing and extending the life of one of Trieste’s major industrial infrastructures, using technology to minimize disruption and improve efficiency in port operations.
