Founded in 2013 in Ravenna, Italy, Subsea Fenix has built its business around a simple idea—evolution is essential to staying ahead. The company’s name ‘Fenix’ (the Italian form of Phoenix) reflects a philosophy of renewal and transformation that has shaped the business throughout its history. Following the passing of founder Federico in 2021, the company underwent another significant period of evolution, building on its established capabilities while developing new ways of working and embracing emerging technologies. Its adoption of USV technology is a natural extension of that approach.
Subsea Fenix began operating USVs in 2018, initially deploying compact 1.5 m platforms for survey operations. After more than 400 survey projects completed using these small-scale vessels, the company has demonstrated the potential for uncrewed technology to reduce the cost, complexity, and personnel requirements associated with conventional survey mobilization. Subsea Fenix has, over almost a decade, built the expertise and the know-how of remote and uncrewed operations using these platforms for operations carried out in various inshore, nearshore, and offshore scenarios.
By late 2025, Subsea Fenix was looking to take that experience further. The company was looking to expand its capabilities with a larger, more capable platform that could support a broader range of hydrographic, geophysical, and subsea inspection missions. That search led the company to HydroSurv.
Subsea Fenix owners Stefano Mancini and Ivan Malavolti traveled to South West England in December 2025 to attend evaluation trials for HydroSurv’s REAV platforms. Discussions between the two companies quickly developed, with both teams recognizing a strong alignment in their approach to technology, engineering, and customer requirements. For Subsea Fenix, a key point was HydroSurv’s willingness to adapt the platform around the operational requirement, covering the gap linked with the other USVs and vessels already in the company fleet.
Stefano Mancini, Owner & CEO of Subsea Fenix, said: “REAV was the natural choice for us, thanks to its versatile and fully customizable platform. HydroSurv proved to be focused on customer needs and helped us select the right system for our needs. Their offer ranges from very small, coastal-type vessels to large, long-range vessels, with full flexibility in terms of the sensors to be integrated. We were impressed by their ‘can-do’ approach and the possibility to integrate any tool or sensor on the platform, but what really convinced us to move with HydroSurv was the flexible approach to convert the REAV-60 from pure survey platform (including multibeam, side scan sonar and sub-bottom profiling) to a fully remote ROV platform, integrating our Saab Seaeye Falcon on the vessel.”
“HydroSurv has been fully committed in developing our ideas, overcoming engineering challenges and integrating on such a compact platform all that we wanted. This is the first system of a series we plan to add to our fleet, and HydroSurv will be, amongst other partners, part of our journey.”
The result is USV Fenix 01, a 5.7 m battery-hybrid USV based on HydroSurv’s REAV-60 platform and developed specifically around Subsea Fenix’s ambition to bring its experience with smaller USVs, ROVs, and vessels into a significantly more capable operational class of USVs. The initial target is to provide a platform capable of working with less constraint, especially in the nearshore area where conventional assets struggle to perform such activities.
At the heart of the vessel is a modular payload architecture that allows the platform to be configured for different mission profiles. Considering the complexity of the whole project, the development of the REAV-60 for Subsea Fenix is split into three separate phases, in accordance with the definition of USV/tool categories as indicated by the IMCA M257 guidelines. Today, the platform has achieved Category A (vessel-mounted equipment, including multibeam echosounder (MBES), sub-bottom profiler (SBP), ultra-short baseline (USBL), etc.) and has been fully commissioned during the month of August. In parallel, the integration of the launch and recovery system for towed systems is in progress and will allow the REAV-60 to achieve Category B USV status (deployment for side scan and magnetometer) by year-end. The last phase of the project is well underway and planned for completion by Q1 2027, which will allow the platform to achieve Category C (active deployment, ROV/ROTV) status.
For hydrographic and geophysical survey operations, USV Fenix 01 can accommodate a survey skid incorporating a Teledyne T51 multibeam echosounder, Innomar sub-bottom profiler, EdgeTech towed side-scan sonar (4125i), USBL (Sonardyne MiniRanger 2), and more depending on clients’ requests and project needs. For subsea inspection, the same vessel can be configured with an ROV skid incorporating a SAAB Seaeye Falcon inspection-class ROV, and thanks to the specific launch and recovery system (LARS), it allows the use of pipe tracker HydroPACT 660. This enables Subsea Fenix to deploy a common uncrewed platform with dynamic positioning capabilities across multiple operational requirements, rather than maintaining separate vessel solutions for survey and subsea inspection.
The vessel has been developed around the demanding station-keeping and maneuverability requirements associated with these operations. The 2026 updates to the REAV-60 incorporate twin steerable 11 kW Rim Drive Technology pod drives, providing enhanced low-speed control and station-keeping performance. A significantly upgraded power architecture incorporates separate AC and DC generation systems alongside a 48V electrical architecture shared with HydroSurv’s REAV-47 platform family.
For Subsea Fenix, these developments are particularly important when deploying an ROV from a USV platform. USV Fenix 01 is designed to support ROV operations to water depths of up to 300 m, while also providing the precise maneuvering and line-keeping performance required for repeatable hydrographic survey operations. The combination of capabilities is intended to give Subsea Fenix and its customers greater flexibility in how it mobilizes for offshore work—with one platform able to undertake multiple classes of mission depending on the installed payload.
Commenting on the company’s wider vision for uncrewed operations, Stefano Mancini added: “What Subsea Fenix is doing today is a step toward the vision that began back in 2018 and that over time has evolved into the company’s current development plan. Our goal is to revolutionize the way offshore activities are performed, reducing risks, emissions and providing clients more efficient projects delivered on time, with cost efficiency and decarbonization as key drivers. We aim to become the benchmark for maritime asset digitalization, redefining subsea and surface inspection standards through automation and artificial intelligence, performing business in a sustainable manner.”
“The USV Fenix 01 is our first contribution to future-proof operations, to allow our customers to take full advantage of the revolution we are preparing, where people work from the office, assets are designed for the projects they need to perform and not adapting projects to what the market can offer, which leads to inefficient projects. Our mission is not to steer the company ‘towards’ the future but getting Subsea Fenix and its clients ‘into’ the future. With today’s delivery of the USV Fenix 01 vehicle, the first of a series of unmanned/remote vehicles, Subsea Fenix is now able to provide the future to its clients.”
For HydroSurv, USV Fenix 01 represents one of its most ambitious USV deliveries to date and demonstrates the potential of its larger REAV platforms to support specialist offshore applications beyond conventional survey operations. “During initial discussions with Stefano and Ivan in December last year, it was clear that Subsea Fenix already had clear ideas of what they needed to achieve with the USV, but also with the ambition to challenge us on what a REAV-60 could be capable of. USV Fenix 01 is a good example of what can happen when the platform design authority and the operator work together at the outset rather than treating an uncrewed vessel as a fixed product,” said David Hull, Founder & CEO, HydroSurv.
The commercial proposition is central to Subsea Fenix’s investment. By replacing elements of conventional vessel mobilization with an uncrewed platform, the company expects to reduce operational cost, mobilization time, and personnel requirements while increasing the flexibility with which survey and inspection assets can be deployed. For clients, the objective is ultimately greater value—more efficient data acquisition, reduced operational exposure, and the ability to deploy the right technology for a specific mission without the cost and complexity traditionally associated with larger crewed survey vessels, contributing immediately to the decarbonization required from all stakeholders during the life cycle of each project.
For Subsea Fenix, that represents a continuation of the philosophy behind its development as a company—not waiting for the future of marine technology to arrive, but identifying where technology can deliver practical operational benefits today. The delivery also marks HydroSurv’s first vessel supplied to the Italian market and establishes a new relationship between two companies with a shared focus on the practical application of uncrewed technology in offshore operations.
The relationship between the two companies will continue to evolve through operational feedback, technology development, and collaboration on future mission-specific platforms, extending the same philosophy that brought the first vessel together—evolution rather than revolution, and technology developed around the operation rather than the other way around.
