Ferretti Group Adopts WATCHIT SENSE 360 Exclusively, Adding Radar Detection on Simrad and HALO to Its Collision Avoidance System

Ferretti Group has announced the exclusive adoption of WATCHIT SENSE 360, the new generation of the collision avoidance system developed by Aqua Marina Tech, an Israeli supplier of marine safety technology. The addition is radar detection, integrated with the Simrad multifunction displays and HALO radar systems already fitted on board.

The word that matters commercially is exclusive. A builder group taking an exclusive on a safety system turns a supplier's roadmap into its own differentiator at the point of sale, and it removes that argument from every competing brochure for as long as the arrangement holds. The word that matters technically is radar, because of what the previous two layers could not do.

The layer that sees what AIS cannot

The first WATCHIT cross-referenced digital charts with position and course data. The second stage added AIS, which extended awareness to surrounding maritime traffic. Both layers share a limitation that is obvious once stated: they only know about what is on a chart or what is actively broadcasting. A vessel with no AIS equipment, or with it switched off, is invisible to them. So is a buoy, a container, a log or anything else that floats without an identity.

Radar closes precisely that gap, and it is the reason this generation is worth reporting rather than the artificial intelligence in the headline. Ferretti Group describes software that monitors risk continuously and raises visual and audible alerts only when a genuine hazard is detected, running in the background without distracting skipper or crew. On a system that will cry wolf several times a night if it is tuned badly, restraint is the feature. An alert that owners learn to ignore is worse than no alert.

Software over hardware that is already aboard

The deployment choice is as interesting as the function. WATCHIT SENSE 360 works through Simrad displays and HALO radar that are already on board, which means the third layer arrives as software over installed equipment rather than as a new box to find space and power for. That is what makes it realistic to roll out across a group that builds under several brands, and it is also what makes the exclusivity valuable: the cost of adding it to a boat that already has the displays is close to nothing.

The system is described as designed for cruising yachts and as adapting automatically to open sea, congested water, harbor areas or lying at anchor, with no mode changes or manual adjustment required. Removing configuration from the operator is the correct instinct for a safety device on a boat that an owner often drives himself, because the setting nobody changes is the setting that fails.

What the announcement does not carry is any number at all. There is no detection range, no minimum target size, no false alert rate, no list of the brands or models that will receive the system, no schedule and no word on whether owners of existing boats can have it. For a safety product those are the specifications that decide whether it changes behavior on board or simply appears in a sales presentation. A group that has now spent four years building this stack layer by layer will eventually be asked to publish them.