PRE2024 3 Group5
Random Ideas and General Notes
TRIDENT (Tactical Robotic Inspection & Detection for Enhanced Nautical-hull Testing
Tasks for this week:
- Sensors - Luuk
- State of the art drones - Anh
- Regulations - Simon
- Cable management - Anton
- Future robot design - Luca
Todo:
- problem statement and objectives
- Problem: ships cant be fully inspected while in the open ocean during transit.
- Objective: make a system that would allow to inspect the hull of the ship while in transit and forward the information to the relevant people.
- who are the users
- Ship companies
- Ship manufacturers
- what do they require
- Reliability
- Precision
- Accuracy
- Budget friendly
- Crack and corrosion detection (defect detection in general)
- approach, milestones and deliverables
- Approach:
- Research the software and sensors that are used to detect hull defects
- Calculating the physical properties of the systems
- Design 2 robots - the guide robots and the sensor robot
- Create a prototype of the sensor robot.
- Milestones and deliverables: same as task plan.
- who is doing what
- state of the art (25 papers)
Possible Contacts:
- TU Delft maritime department, https://www.tudelft.nl/me/over/afdelingen/maritime-and-transport-technology/about-mtt/contact
- NakAI Robotics, https://www.nakairobotics.com/
- Damen Shipyards Group, https://www.damen.com/#contact
- NL Flag, https://nlflag.nl/
Group Members
| Name | Student ID | Department | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anton Veshnyakov | 1866508 | Electrical Engineering | a.veshnyakov@student.tue.nl |
| Luuk Kool | 1883542 | Electrical Engineering | l.j.c.kool@student.tue.nl |
| Anh That Tuan Ton | 1816209 | Electrical Engineering | a.ton.that.tuan.anh@student.tue.nl |
| Luca Rutz | 1781294 | Electrical Engineering | l.d.rutz@student.tue.nl |
| Simon van Valkengoed | 1881361 | Electrical Engineering | s.h.v.valkengoed@student.tue.nl |
Problem Statement
Inspecting the hull of a ship is a critical step in insuring the safety and operability of a sip, be it a small fishing boat or a giant ocean crossing cargo ship. Traditionally, those inspections were done using divers. As technology progressed, the role of hull inspections shifted from humans to ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) and other autonomous robotic systems. However, currently the available solutions operate primarily while the ship is in the shallow waters of a port or while it is already docked. This means, that if a ship incurred some damage, it will be discovered relatively late in its journey, which in turn will delay the repairs and keep the ship docked for longer than necessary. Our system aims to make the discovery of possible faults in advance, while the ship is still at sea, allowing for faster turn around time and potentially reduced ecological impact.
Objectives
In order to demonstrate that the system is feasible, usable, and needed, the following steps will be taken:
- Explore the current use of divers and ROVs to carry out hull inspections.
- Explore the what types of sensors are used for defect discovery.
- The impact of delayed defect discovery on the turn around time of a ship.
- The impact of keeping a ship in port on the local ecology.
- Build a scaled prototype of the cable riding robot.
- Develop the control software needed to execute the mission.
- Test the prototype on a mock-up of a ship hull.
Planning
| Week | Tasks |
|---|---|
| 1 | Initial group set-up and task planing. |
| 2 | Literature research. |
| Reach out to a specialist in the field. | |
| Construct a list of needed components for a prototype. | |
| 3 | Start prototyping the system. |
| 4 | Finish constructing a prototype. |
| 5 | Test, tweak and evaluate the system. |
| Draw conclusions and possible future improvements. | |
| 6 | Create the final presentation. |
| 7 | Finalize the wiki page. |
Logbook
| Name | Total Time (Hours) | Work Description |
|---|---|---|
| Anton Veshnyakov | 7 | Attended lecture (3h), Organized and structured the wiki page (1h), Group meeting (1h), Organizing the planning chart (1h), Research of problem statement and objectives (1h) |
| Luuk Kool | 4 | search for papers (1h) / meeting (1h)/ research sensors(2h) |
| Anh That Tuan Ton | 1 | Searched for relevant articles (1h), research paper (4h) |
| Luca | 2 | meeting (1h), research on needed components (1h) |
| Simon |
| Name | Total Time (Hours) | Work Description |
|---|---|---|
| Anton Veshnyakov | ||
| Luuk Kool | ||
| Anh That Tuan Ton | ||
| Luca | ||
| Simon |
Sensors
Hull
Camera for visual inspection
ultrasonic for thickness measurements
Rail robot
Determine position along rail:
Estimate position with encoder on the wheel, this will drift due to slip. Position can be reset with periodic magnets in the rail and hall effect sensors.
Inspecting robot
Determine position along line
Determine speed
Determine angle
Determine depth
Might be possible to track these with an imu on the robot, subtracting with an imu on the rail robot to compensate for the movement of the ship. Can work in conjunction with an encoder on the wheels or a mapping to the ship topology for more accurate results (kalman filter)
chains?
Needed Components
Both robots need to be water proof. A prototype of these robots would need to be 3D printed. The best way to have a waterproof 3D print is to use petg filament and a sealer. To build the robots we would also need a strong and long cable and a metal surface to test the robots on.
Rail robot
- ESP-32, microcontroller with build in wireless communication
- 4 Stepper motors, 2 used for moving along the rail and 2 used for reeling in the cable.
- gears, to get the correct gear ratio for driving on the r
- Motor shield to drive the stepper motors.
- 4 wheels or gears, used to connect to the rail and move along it
- Rails, to move along
- Batteries or external power cable, used to power the electronics.
Inpspecting robot
- Raspberry Pi, powerfull board that can handle multiple tasks
- 2 stepper motors, used to move along the cable
- A motor shield to drive the stepper motors
- 4 wheels to roll along the hull
- 2 wheels which are used to drive the cable
- Gears, to get to correct torque for driving along the cable
- Batteries or external power, to drive the system
- Raspberry Pi camera
- Strong light, used to make the hull clear for the camera
- Some sort of utrasonic sensor to scann the hull
- (accelerometer, maybe used to determine position and speed)
Articles summary
https://tuenl-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/r/personal/a_ton_that_tuan_anh_student_tue_nl/Documents/Documents/Year%203/Quartile%203/0LAUK0/Article%20summary.docx?d=w072622aab5a34691aa5c9248b16dc866&csf=1&web=1&e=gP4b5P
Bibliography
- ↑ Ferreira, C.Z., Yuri, G., Conte, C., Avila, J.P., Pereira, R.C., Morais, T., & Ribeiro, C. (2013). UNDERWATER ROBOTIC VEHICLE FOR SHIP HULL INSPECTION: CONTROL SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE.
- ↑ Cardaillac, Alexandre & Skjetne, Roger & Ludvigsen, Martin. (2024). ROV-Based Autonomous Maneuvering for Ship Hull Inspection with Coverage Monitoring. Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems. 110. 10.1007/s10846-024-02095-2.
- ↑ Negahdaripour, Shahriar & Firoozfam, Pezhman. (2006). An ROV Stereovision System for Ship-Hull Inspection. Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Journal of. 31. 551 - 564. 10.1109/JOE.2005.851391.
- ↑ A. F. Ali and M. R. Arshad, "Ship Hull Inspection using Remotely Operated Vehicle," 2022 IEEE 9th International Conference on Underwater System Technology: Theory and Applications (USYS), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2022, pp. 1-4, doi: 10.1109/USYS56283.2022.10072609. keywords: {Underwater cables;Visualization;Remotely guided vehicles;Prototypes;Inspection;Sensors;Safety;Remotely Operated Vehicle;Ship Hull Inspection;Unmanned Underwater Vehicle},
- ↑ Li, J., He, Y., Tao, W. (2025). Design and Implementation of a Modular Underwater Brush-Clearing Robot and Its Observation Module. In: Pham, D.T., Lei, Y., Lou, Y. (eds) Mechanical Design and Simulation: Exploring Innovations for the Future. MDS 2024. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-7887-4_35