Alligator can be deployed in infrastructure-free environments, manned or unmanned. | Source: Skana Robotics

In a world where humanity has been building ports, berths, and triggers for centuries, the Israeli startup Skana Robotics offers a radically simple idea: what if you just don't use them? The company introduced the autonomous amphibious vessel Alligator, whose main feature is not artificial intelligence or insane speed, but the brazen abandonment of the entire coastal infrastructure. This robot comes to the shore, releases its tracks and crawls out onto dry land, as if that's the right thing to do. Ramps, docks, cranes — all of this suddenly began to look like archaic excess.

"From the sea, the Alligator approaches the coastline with its tracks retracted, behaving like a standard surface vessel," Idan Levy, co—founder and CEO of Skana Robotics, describes the process. — The reverse process is similar: from land, the Alligator slides down a natural or partially prepared shore, enters the water on tracks, stabilizes, then removes them and switches to full sea movement. The key point is that there is no need for ramps, berths or cranes." It sounds so simple that you can't help but wonder what we've all been struggling with for the last couple of millennia.

What is Alligator? Numbers instead of pathos

The Alligator is not a prototype for the exhibition, but a device that is being prepared for mass production, which should replenish the company's product line as early as the first quarter of 2026. Its characteristics speak for themselves, without embellishment.:

• Load capacity: 1,500 kg (or 3307 lbs). These are about two large snowmobiles, dozens of boxes with humanitarian aid, or a group of divers with equipment.
• Range of travel: 300 nautical miles (about 556 km). It is enough to cross, for example, the Baltic Sea in its widest part.
• Speed: Up to 40 knots (74 km/h). Faster than many Coast Guard boats.

The essence: A high-speed marine vessel that is not afraid of shallow water and can drive directly onto the beach, into a swamp or onto a shore destroyed after a storm.

The main challenge that the engineers had to solve was to ensure true duality. "For most amphibious systems, you end up choosing the 'main' environment,— Levy admits. —In the case of the Alligator, the requirement was a genuine duality: stable operation with low draft on water and reliable grip, stability and the ability to transport goods on land." And all this is with an eye to the possibility of mass production, the use of standard components and the preservation of strength in an aggressive salty environment.

Why is this necessary? From War to Penguin Rescue

The scope of the Alligator is wide, as is the geography of the planet's coastlines. The vessel is positioned as a mobile platform for launching and recovering underwater vehicles (for example, the same Stingray AUV from Skana), which allows exploration or inspection away from the carrier ships. It is an ideal tool for:

• Critical infrastructure protection: Patrolling areas around offshore wind farms, pipelines or ports.
• Elimination of consequences of natural disasters: Delivery of goods and equipment to areas where traditional infrastructure has been destroyed.
• Search and rescue operations: Work in difficult coastal areas where large ships or helicopters cannot always reach quickly.
• Scientific research: Delivery and sampling from hard-to-reach shores, ecosystem monitoring.

The Alligator is part of the linked Skana fleet and is managed through the SeaSphere mission planning system, allowing for the coordination of complex operations with other surface and underwater drones.

A future where fleets are programmed and robots are leased

Idan Levy sees several key trends for the near future. First, the maturation of hybrid fleets, where manned ships work in conjunction with autonomous vehicles. Secondly, the transition to software-defined marine platforms, where new functions and mission logic are added through updates, rather than through physical redesign of the vessel. Thirdly, there is a growing interest in distributed and "consumable" systems that do not replace huge warships, but significantly expand their capabilities and coverage area.

And here our reflection smoothly leads to an interesting moment. When such highly specialized but universal autonomous platforms become widespread, the model of their use will also change. It is likely that to perform a one—time task — say, an inspection of a remote section of the coast or an urgent delivery of cargo to a disaster area - the organization will prefer not to buy an expensive Alligator, but to rent it for a while. This opens the field for the emergence of new types of ecosystem services that specialize in the selection, deployment, and management of robotics fleets for specific, temporary projects. In fact, this is the next logical step: from owning technology to using its capabilities as an on—demand service.

The first full-fledged demonstration of Alligator's capabilities is scheduled for the second quarter of 2026. Skana Robotics emphasizes that this is not a clean start: the development is based on the team's twenty years of experience in creating and operating autonomous systems in real conditions. They already know what breaks down first in the coastal area and how autonomy behaves in the absence of GPS. Alligator is a product that initially contains lessons learned from previous failures. Well, humanity learns from its mistakes. It looks like we now have a robot that can avoid them.