The ocean is a mysterious place. Although it covers 70% of our planet, only 20% has been explored. Companies like Witted Srl from Italy are working to develop new technology that will help us understand the Earth better.
CEO and co-founder of Witted Andrea Saiani joined the Onshape webinar How Witted Develops Green Deep-Tech Marine Robots with Onshape to explain how they make their robots in Onshape and why they made the switch from SOLIDWORKS to Onshape.
Revamping a Biodiversity Map from 1539
In 1539, Italy developed a biodiversity map that analyzed the unique ecosystems throughout Italy’s coastline. Witted wants to reinvent and update the map using deep-tech marine robotics technology.
A biodiversity map of the coast of Italy created in 1539.
Witted was co-founded by the European Space Agency and has since partnered with Nvidia and the World Wide Fund for Nature.
The idea to create modern, deep-tech robots came from a long-term problem in the marine conservation community: Research is collected too slowly. Most researchers use divers to collect data about the ocean, but divers require high costs, liabilities, and time to manually collect samples.
Witted’s robots will speed up this process by collecting larger samples and mapping out different seabeds along Italy’s coast while they are working underwater.
One of the specimens that Witted is focusing on in their research is called Posidonia oceanica. Also known as “the olive of the sea” in Italy, the seagrass is a crucial part of the Mediterranean Sea’s ecosystem.
Recently the population of Posidonia oceanica has been declining and Witted wants to use its robots to understand why.
Can Your CAD Work as Fast as This?
Witted started their project on SOLIDWORKS and quickly ran into a handful of issues. Their data management was all over the place with multiple copies of the same file being renamed by different teams, it was impossible to keep track of their work.
When they started looking for a better product data management (PDM) solution, they found Onshape and started seeing improvements immediately.
Witted’s Flat Cow Drone modeled in Onshape.
“All the time that we used to manage Dropbox folders just disappeared with Onshape,” Saiani said. “We were spending hours, days, and weeks organizing our work and now all that time is just free.”
In addition to saving time with Onshape, Witted has also saved money on hardware, licensing, and updates. Onshape runs in-browser, so you can operate on whatever device you want. For Saiani, he likes working on a MacBook Pro in Google Chrome, and Onshape has never crashed on him once.
Dive into the Witted Webinar
For more information about Witted and how they use Onshape, watch the full webinar now. Saiani includes a demonstration of how Witted organizes its parts in Onshape and more information about why they made the switch and all the benefits that they like the most.