Dangerous conditions
To ensure the structural safety of ships, oil and gas and other marine infrastructures, they must be surveyed to detect corrosion, cracks or deformation. Currently, this task is done by human surveyors who must climb into confined areas such as ballast tanks, or cargo holds which represent extremely dangerous environments, in which there is no satellite connection.
The inspection is a physically demanding task, done in tight enclosed spaces, difficult to access, with low/no light, slippery surfaces and with low/no oxygen and toxic gases. According to the International Marine Organization (IMO) one person is killed on average every week from accidents in such enclosed spaces.
Time is money
During the inspection process the ship cannot operate, posing high pressure on surveyors to work quickly.
Major 5-year dry dock inspections cost around 1 million EUR per vessel, resulting in about 11 billion EUR per year for the whole industry. The reason for these high costs is that an average inspection takes up to 15 days, during which the vessel cannot operate. If the inspection time could be reduced to 3 days, the industry would save 80% (i.e. 0.8M€ per vessel).
The project
AUTOASSESS aims to employ a drone and move human surveyors out of harm’s way while at the same time obtaining an accurate, repeatable, and quick vessel inspection.
In recent years progress has been made in aerial systems, or drones for mapping and inspection. Even though the inspection of enclosed marine structures in challenging conditions is still a problematic task, an aerial multi-robotic human centric system, with automated AI based scanning, mapping and Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) has the potential to remove the need for human inspection.
Only by combining and integrating the latest developments in collision-tolerant UAS, multi-modal Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, path planning, autonomous drone racing, aerial manipulation, miniaturized NDT sensors and Machine Learning-based defect identification it is possible to deploy drones in these tight spaces for inspection purposes. This superhuman approach would also decrease time and costs, as inspections will take as little as 1 day, saving the industry multiple billion EUR per year.
Consortium
DTU Electro is the coordinator of the 16 consortium members from 9 different countries including many of the world leaders in the field of unmanned aircraft system-based inspections. The consortium brings along the latest research and development in this area. Vessel owners and surveyors are also among the partners, enabling an end-to-end survey solution which would save around 50 lives per year and provide more reliable, accurate and less costly inspection data.
Facts
- Official title: AUTOASSESS – Autonomous aerial inspection of GNSS-denied and confined critical infrastructures
- Start date: October 1st 2023
- Duration: 4 years
- Total budget: 97.000.000 DKK
