Zelim is one of the companies selected to join Phase 2 of NATO DIANA’s acceleration programme. Their AI-enabled maritime situational awareness solution, ZOE, provides consistent, highly accurate detection capabilities in challenging marine environments – helping keep personnel and offshore assets safe at sea.
What does your company do and what is the solution you applied to DIANA with?
"Zelim is an Edinburgh-based maritime technology company providing advanced AI systems to protect people and assets at sea. Our mission is to protect what matters most by accelerating the adoption of autonomous safety and surveillance capabilities across defence and critical maritime sectors.
We applied to the DIANA programme with ZOE, an AI-enabled maritime situational awareness tool that provides real-time detection, classification, and tracking of small and hard-to-detect objects on the water for both safety and security applications. ZOE is distilled into 3x products, ZOE MOB for automated man overboard detection, ZOE Lookout for navigational safety and ZOE Shield for maritime perimeter security.
ZOE processes sensor data from both daylight and infrared cameras to create a persistent, autonomous “watchkeeper”. It enhances vigilance in all conditions, supporting naval and coastguard operators in maintaining safety, security and readiness across complex maritime environments."
What problem does your solution solve?
"Maritime threats are becoming faster, smaller, and increasingly sophisticated - from unmanned surface vessels to covert approaches in congested waters. Traditional surveillance and watchkeeping rely heavily on human observation, which is limited by fatigue, visibility, and reaction time.
ZOE Shield closes that gap. It continuously monitors the surface view, autonomously detecting and classifying potential threats, and alerting operators to their proximity.
By providing AI-driven situational awareness locally onboard the vessel or coastal facility, without depending on external bandwidth, ZOE gives naval crews persistent local intelligence, even in denied or jammed communications environments.
The result is safer vessel operations, earlier threat identification, enhanced vessel protection, and reduced cognitive load for operators, enhancing readiness and response in both peacetime patrols and active operations."
How did the company get started?
"Zelim was founded in 2019 to tackle the toughest challenge in maritime safety: saving lives at sea. Our early work focused on AI detection and autonomous rescue craft for offshore and coastguard missions.
The same technologies used to spot people in distress in rough seas quickly proved invaluable for identifying small, fast-moving craft and other surface targets. This evolution led to ZOE Shield, a platform capable of protecting crews not just from accidents, but from adversarial threats.
Our team brings together expertise from maritime rescue, AI/ Software engineering, and maritime operations, with a shared goal of delivering deployable autonomy that enhances human performance, protects assets and saves lives."
Was your company already positioned as a dual-use company before DIANA? Why did you decide to apply?
"Yes, Zelim’s technology has always bridged civilian and defence applications. Our systems originated in offshore safety, where rapid detection and response are critical, but the same principles apply directly to naval and coastguard operations.
Prior to joining DIANA, Zelim had started a US Navy technology program focussed on the deployment of ZOE MOB on Aircraft Carriers. We applied to DIANA with the aim of expanding our early US Navy traction to other Allied Nations, whilst learning more about defence use cases for our technology that would inform our future product line.
One of the greatest challenges in selling product into defence, is the procurement process, Zelim are already making use of NATO DIANA’s Rapid Adoption Service to secure first projects with defence end users.
For us, DIANA provides a unique opportunity to transition from life-saving commercial systems to mission-critical defence capabilities, bringing dual-use technology into service faster, more affordably, and with allied collaboration built in from day one."
How does your tech differ from competitors?
"ZOE can be deployed at scale for 360° vessel coverage, our system installed on a Cruise Ship ingests 36 sensor feeds simultaneously in real time and provides detections on a single UI. Competitor solutions are limited to processing single camera installations at the edge, whereas ZOE can handle dozens of feeds on prem.
Our detection algorithms for both daylight and IR sensors have been built in-house from our proprietary dataset of 7.5m labelled images, gathered over numerous data gathering exercises over the past 5 years."
What has been your biggest success or milestone to date since starting the DIANA programme?
"One of our key milestones was the operational demonstration of ZOE MOB and ZOE Shield onboard a Naval frigate during NATO’s largest naval exercise, REPMUS 2025 in Portugal. This was the first time ZOE was deployed on a Naval vessel. The trials validated the system’s ability to autonomously detect MOB incidents, scoring a 100% successful detection record whilst onboard. Additionally, ZOE Shield successfully tracked multiple surface contacts in real time and fed data into the common operating picture.
DIANA’s support has been instrumental, giving us access to major exercises to demonstrate our products, technical mentorship, and exposure to potential partners and end users that have helped to accelerate our transition from the commercial sector.
The exercise confirmed ZOE’s value as an AI-enabled tool for crew safety, situational awareness and threat detection, paving the way for its adoption within naval surface fleets."
What’s next on the horizon for your company?
"Our long-term vision is to establish ZOE as a core capability for naval situational awareness: a scalable, AI-powered system that enhances decision-making, reduces workload, and strengthens protection across the world’s oceans.
We’re now progressing from Naval demonstration to deployment. The next stage will focus on adoption, with the ambition to secure a pilot customer in defence via the NATO DIANA Rapid Adoption Service, deploying ZOE either onboard a naval asset or coastal infrastructure.
Additionally, we will be going out for investment over the next 6 months and expanding our presence in the US to be ready for our US Navy project progressing towards deployment."