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Autonomous Robotic Inspection and Maintenance on Ship Hulls and Storage Tanks

Project description

Robots conduct ship hull inspection

Underwater hull cleaning is an important part of ship maintenance, which includes all techniques used to keep the part of the ship under the waterline in good condition. The EU-funded BugWright2 project will develop and demonstrate an adaptable autonomous robotic solution for servicing the outer hulls of ships. It will combine the survey capabilities of autonomous micro air vehicles (MAV) and small autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) with teams of magnetic-wheeled crawlers operating directly on the surface of the structure. The project will facilitate a multi-robot visual and acoustic inspection, detecting corrosion patches or cleaning the surface as necessary. What is more, the technology being developed may also be adapted to storage tanks or other structures assembled out of metal plates.

Objective

The objective of BUGWRIGHT2 will be to bridge the gap between the current and desired capabilities of ship inspection and service robots by developing and demonstrating an adaptable autonomous robotic solution for servicing ship outer hulls. By combining the survey capabilities of autonomous Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) and small Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), with teams of magnetic-wheeled crawlers operating directly on the surface of the structure, the project inspection and cleaning system will be able to seamlessly merge the acquisition of a global overview of the structure with performing a detailed multi-robot visual and acoustic inspection of the structure, detecting corrosion patches or cleaning the surface as necessary – all of this with minimal user intervention. The detailed information provided will be integrated into a real-time visualization and decision-support user-interface taking advantage of virtual reality technologies. Although ships are the targetted application, BUGWRIGHT2 technology may be easily adapted to different structures assembled out of metal plates, and in particular to storage tanks, our secondary application domain.

The project consists of a large consortium bringing together not only the technological knowledge from academia but the complete value chain of the inspection robotic market: two SMEs, one class society to evaluate the use of these technologies in the certification processes, a marine service provider and two harbors to provide access to ships, one shipyard to deploy the system within a maintenance framework and two shipowners. In addition, specialists in maritime laws and workplace psychologists will ensure that the digitalization of this market sector is designed around user acceptance. Finally, a specialist in innovation will lead the dissemination and exploitation activities.

Call for proposal

H2020-ICT-2018-20

See other projects for this call

Sub call

H2020-ICT-2019-2

Coordinator

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
Net EU contribution
€ 765 296,25
Address
RUE MICHEL ANGE 3
75794 Paris
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
€ 882 926,25

Participants (22)