Braving the oceans and the deep waters within them can be dangerous. With obstacles such as currents, aggressive aquatic life, and the changing swell of the ocean itself in place, having technology suited to tracking divers and underwater vehicles has become essential, especially in times when catastrophic failures have been widely publicized.
For Maurizio Banfi, an engineer who has worked in the marine electronics industry for 30 years, he knows these types of obstacles better than anyone. Throughout his career in the electronics industry, he has invented, patented, developed, and sold two revolutionary products.
The first is an ROV & Diver tracker, which provides real-time position updates on an underwater vehicle or diver to the surface above.
The second, called Sharknet, is a safety device for scuba and free drivers that can send distress signals when needed, and even transmit crucial data as a result.
Together, these two devices allow for underwater navigation in harsh, often dangerous environments, allowing divers, underwater vehicle operators, and the people who work with them peace of mind whenever their products or crew are underwater.
After these two groundbreaking products that revolutionized underwater operations, Maurizio has lately been working on a new interfacing technology able to connect a variety of different systems, operating over different protocols and interfacing standards, to function seaming less as a whole.
Q: How did you work to create this new technology? What challenges did you face when creating it?
A: When integrating equipment to create new systems, electrical engineers are accustomed to reading through the various interfacing specs to connect the various devices properly, eventually inserting any appropriate interface adapter already available or somehow customizable. However, when the technologies of the different devices to be integrated differ too greatly, a dedicated "interface box" needs to be created from scratch.
Q: How does an interfacing box work with your technology?
A: The "interfacing box" is actually an invention itself, even if it sits concealed inside a more complex system and nobody sees it. Just like any new invention, several skills are required to create it-electrical design, mechanical design, heat removal, vibration, shock, water penetration, and other factors come into play together with cost and price considerations. Because a box typically serves one specific company developing one specific, more complex product, the engineer developing the box needs to work to effectively communicate what its purpose is and what requirements it needs in order to function with a particular product.
Q: What are some of your notable career headlights that you would like to share?
A: For the ROV & Diver Tracker technology, I have obtained two Italian patents and have exhibited at Oceanology International 2010, Undersea Defense Technology Europe 2010, VIPS Conference 2011, and Underwater Intervention Conference 2012. With Sharknet, I have both a US and an EU patent and have won the prize for best entrepreneurial idea at the Start Cup Lombardy in 2016.
Q: What would you say is required to invent something unheard of?
A: Inventing something new requires many different skills. In addition to technical skills in different areas of expertise, the invention of a new product requires skills that are almost unknown to most design engineers. The most important of them are sales/marketing and the capability to acquire funding.
Q: In closing, what would you say was the most challenging aspect you experienced while developing these products?
A: During the pandemic, global supply chains were disrupted, and several pieces of engineering equipment soon became unavailable. In order not to stop the development of new products (or even the operation of already operational systems requiring spare parts), the only solution was integrating alternate components or equipment that were available but had far different interfacing requirements (or even different end usages). Through these challenges, engineers like myself had to use innovation in order to proceed with our work and to "reinvent," in some regards, the interface boxes that I've mentioned previously.
