Vessel maintenance entails periodic visual inspections of internal and external parts of the hull in order to detect the typical defective situations affecting metallic structures, such as cracks, coating breakdown, corrosion, etc. The main goal of the EU-FP7 project MINOAS is the automation of the inspection process, currently undertaken by human surveyors, by means of a fleet of robotic agents. This paper overviews a semi-autonomous approach to the inspection problem consisting of an autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) to be used as part of this fleet and which is in charge of regularly supplying images that can effectively teleport the surveyor from a base station to the areas of the hull to be inspected. Specific image processing software to analyze those images and assist the surveyor during the repair/no repair decision making process is also contributed. The control software approach adopted for the MAV, including self-localization and obstacle avoidance, is described and discussed, and experimental results in this regard are as well reported.
Publication type: Conferences
Large-tonnage vessels need to be revised periodically in order to detect defective situations, such as cracks, coating breakdown or corrosion that could lead to a catastrophe. The EU-FP7 project MINOAS is designed to develop a fleet of robotic platforms to automate this inspection process. This paper presents a Micro Aerial Vehicle platform to be used as part of this fleet. The control architecture adopted for the MAV and the key challenges that have guided us towards this solution are described and discussed, while hardware, software and network con gurations are also exposed. Finally, experimental results proving the suitability of the design are reported.
The need for intervention in underwater environments is significantly increasing in the last years. Possible applications include maintenance intervention in permanent observatories and offshore scenarios, and search & recovery for collecting objects of interest for different application domains like biology, fishery, or marine rescue just to name a few. Nowadays, these kind of tasks are usually solved with “work-class” ROVs that are launched from support vessels and are remotely operated by expert pilots through an umbilical communications cable and complex control interfaces. These solutions present several drawbacks. Firstly, ROVs are normally large and heavy vehicles that need significant logistics for its transportation and handling. Secondly, the complex user interfaces and control methods require skilled pilots for their use. These two facts significantly increase the cost of the applications. Moreover, the need of an umbilical cable introduces additional problems of control, or range limitation. The fatigue and high stress that users of remotely operated systems normally suffer supposes another serious drawback. All the pointed questions justify the need of more autonomous, cheap and easy- to-use solutions for underwater intervention missions, and this is the aim of the current FP7-TRIDENT project. So, in this paper an overview concerning the main research ongoing under this project will be presented and discussed.