Learn more about what AUTOASSESS has to offer
The problem that
we want to address
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 GNSS-denied environments.
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.
Further, during the inspection process the ship cannot operate, posing high pressure on surveyors to work quickly. Major 5-year dry dock inspections are associated with around 1 M€ per vessel, resulting in about 11B€ 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).
1
person
killed
per week
it to 0
11B€
costs
per year
AUTOASSESS
aproach will decrease time
and costs
The AUTOASSESS Project
The goal of the AUTOASSESS project is to employ a robot and remove 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 euros per year.
The AUTOASSESS Solution
