SBIR Phase I: Autonomous and permanently deployed ship hull inspection and cleaning vehicle

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是提高航运业的效率。生物污垢，或船舶表面污染，增加阻力，从而使旅行效率低下。该项目将开发一种水下机器人系统，执行自动船体检查和清洁，将燃油效率提高10%，随后每年为集装箱船节省200万美元。自动清洁解决方案提高了安全性，并最大限度地减少了昂贵的人力劳动。拟议的创新将保持船体和涂层的性能；此外，它将生成高分辨率图像，可以改进涂层设计，以及昂贵且耗时的干船坞程序。除船体清洗外，自动化清洗技术在垂直工业检测自动化和军事领域也有广泛的应用。这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将开发一种自动、永久部署的船体检查和清洁车辆。第一阶段项目将开发一种低成本的传感器架构和定位算法，可以可靠地将车辆放置在船体上。迄今为止，大型人类可部署的机器人清洁车已经取得了进展，可以替代潜水员的操作。然而，这些车辆必须在港口或港口附近使用，具有复杂的过滤系统，价格昂贵且难以部署，并且需要训练有素的操作员。在第一阶段项目中，将开发一种最低清洁速度为0.25 m/s的自主磁爬行车，用于测试该应用的传感器。被确定为互补和可靠的传感器将被集成，使用概率估计器将车辆定位在船体上。为了确保车辆在水下高阻力环境下优化其能源使用，成功的一个关键指标将是在95%的时间内准确地将车辆定位在船体3米内，以最大限度地减少清洁覆盖范围的重叠。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to improve efficiency in the shipping industry. Biofouling, or surface contamination on ships, increases drag and consequently makes travel inefficient. This project will develop an underwater robotic system that performs automated ship hull inspections and cleaning, increasing fuel efficiency by 10 percent and subsequently saving a container vessel $2 million annually. An automated cleaning solution improves safety and minimizes expensive human labor. The proposed innovation will maintain hull and coating performance; furthermore it will generate high-resolution images that can lead to improvements in coating design, as well as expensive and time-consuming dry-dock procedures. Beyond ship hull cleaning, automated cleaning technology has broad applications in vertical industrial inspection automation and military use. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop an autonomous and permanently deployed ship hull inspection and cleaning vehicle. This Phase 1 project will develop a low-cost sensor architecture and localization algorithm that can reliably place the vehicle on the hull. To date, there has been progress on large human-deployable robotic cleaning vehicles that can be an alternative to diver operations. However, these vehicles must be used at or close to a port, have complex filtration systems, are expensive and difficult to deploy, and require trained operators. During Phase I project, an autonomous magnetic crawling vehicle with a minimum cleaning speed of 0.25 m/s will be developed to test sensors for this application. Sensors identified as complementary and reliable will be integrated to position the vehicle on the hull using a probabilistic estimator. To ensure the vehicle optimizes its energy usage when submerged in a high drag environment, a key metric of success will be to accurately position the vehicle within 3 meters on the ship hull 95 percent of the time to minimize cleaning coverage overlap.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.