Robots take over inspection of ballast tanks on ships

Doctoral degree candidate Dian Borgerink of the Robotics and Mechatronics department at the University of Twente developed the build-on robotic arm for RoboShip, working together with the department's chairman, Stefano Stramigioli, and master's student Jop Huttenhuis.
Credit: Image courtesy of University of Twente

A new robot for inspecting ballast water tanks on board ships is being developed by a Dutch-German partnership including the University of Twente. The robot is able to move independently along rails built into the tanks. At the moment, people still carry out such inspections, with ships being brought into dry dock for the purpose. The costs can be as high as € 700,000 per inspection. The RoboShip project offers great advantages, not only in terms of cost but also in terms of safety.

RoboShip is an independent, intelligent robotic platform on rails for use within the shipping industry. The parties involved in the RoboShip project brought together a number of innovations in it. Imotect, for example, developed a smart, cost-efficient rail, while DFKI was responsible for an autonomous vehicle to run along the rails. Incas³ developed the sensors, Xsens developed the tank navigation system, and the University of Twente was responsible for ensuring that a thorough inspection of the ballast water tanks is carried out using the equipment. The Meyer Werft shipyard in Germany has now also joined the project and will be integrating RoboShip into the ships it builds.

Operators are able to determine the exact position of the robot within the ballast water tanks thanks to a magnetic field. Other developments include a simple way of building synthetic rails into ships, an improvement to the supply of energy through the rails and advanced communication and navigation systems.

Current inspections: dangerous and expensive

Ballast water tanks are either filled with seawater or are left empty. Seawater is extremely aggressive and attacks steel. This is why regular inspection from within is required. Current practice is for a group of six inspectors to carry out such inspections. In doing so, they run the risk of injury through falls or of breathing in noxious gases. The autonomous RoboShip inspection robot makes such risks a thing of the past. Using the robot also greatly improves the efficiency of inspections.

Inspectors evaluate the data transmitted on a screen outside of the ballast water tank, considerably reducing the overall time required for inspecting a ship. The time that liners need to spend in dock can also be considerably reduced as tank inspections can take place while the ship is still in operation. Any repairs required can then be scheduled in before the ship goes to dry dock. Having a ship in dock is, after all, an expensive business, with costs running into the hundreds of thousands of euros. In the future, when the energy supply through the rails has been further improved, the robot will be able to work on the ballast water tank's surfaces using a laser. It will then be able to remove paint residues, for example, and it will also become possible to clean and coat the tanks.

Robotic arm from Twente

Doctoral degree candidate Dian Borgerink of the Robotics and Mechatronics department at the University of Twente developed the build-on robotic arm for RoboShip, working together with the department's chairman, Stefano Stramigioli, and master's student Jop Huttenhuis. Borgerink also works for the INCAS³ research institute, which developed the sensor system on the arm.

"I have had the opportunity of seeing the inside of a freighter's ballast water tank," says Borgerink. "After a voyage, it is slippery with seaweed and is full of noxious gases. Tanks like these are almost inaccessible due to ribs, pipes and cables. Realising that people actually need to go into them to carry out inspection work was what motivated me to develop the robotic arm." While designing the robotic arm, Borgerink and his colleagues were presented with many challenges. The arm needed to be collapsible, lightweight and accurate. The research carried out has already been presented at IROS 2014 in Chicago, a leading conference for the robotics and automation sector.

The Roboship research is funded by the German-Dutch INTERREG IVA subsidy programme.

Source: University of Twente

Getting Bot Besponders into Shape - Scientists are tackling one of the biggest barriers to the use of robots in emergency response: energy efficiency

Steve Buerger is leading a Sandia National Laboratories project to demonstrate how energy efficient biped walking robots could become. Increased efficiency could enable bots to operate for much longer periods of time without recharging batteries, an important factor in emergency situations. Credit: Photo by Randy Montoya

Sandia National Laboratories is tackling one of the biggest barriers to the use of robots in emergency response: energy efficiency.

Through a project supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Sandia is developing technology that will dramatically improve the endurance of legged robots, helping them operate for long periods while performing the types of locomotion most relevant to disaster response scenarios.

One of Sandia's new robots that showcases this technology will be demonstrated at an exposition to be held in conjunction with the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals next June.

As the finals draw closer, some of the most advanced robotics research and development organizations in the world are racing to develop emergency response robots that can complete a battery of tasks specified by DARPA. Competing robots will face degraded physical environments that simulate conditions likely to occur in a natural or human-made disaster. Many robots will walk on legs to allow them to negotiate challenging terrain.

Sandia's robots won't compete in the finals next June, but they could ultimately help the winning robots extend their battery life until their life-saving work is done.

"We'll demonstrate how energy efficient biped walking robots could become. Increased efficiency could allow robots similar to those used for the competition to operate for much longer periods of time without recharging batteries," said project lead Steve Buerger of Sandia's Intelligent Systems Control Dept.

Batteries need to last for emergency response robots

Battery life is an important concern in the usefulness of robots for emergency response.
"You can have the biggest, baddest, toughest robot on the planet, but if its battery life is 10 or 20 minutes, as many are right now, that robot cannot possibly function in an emergency situation, when lives are at stake," said Buerger.

The first robot Sandia is developing in support of the DARPA Challenge, is known as STEPPR for Sandia Transmission Efficient Prototype Promoting Research. It is a fully functional research platform that allows developers to try different joint-level mechanisms that function like elbows and knees to quantify how much energy is used.

Sandia's second robot, WANDERER for Walking Anthropomorphic Novelly Driven Efficient Robot for Emergency Response, will be a more optimized and better-packaged prototype.

Energy-efficient actuators key to testing

The key to the testing is Sandia's novel, energy-efficient actuators, which move the robots' joints. The actuation system uses efficient, brushless DC motors with very high torque-to-weight ratios, very efficient low-ratio transmissions and specially designed passive mechanisms customized for each joint to ensure energy efficiency.

"We take advantage of dynamic characteristics that are common to a wide variety of legged behaviors and add a set of 'support elements,' including springs and variable transmissions, that keep the motors operating at more efficient speed-torque conditions, reducing losses," Buerger said.

Electric motors are particularly inefficient when providing large torques at low speeds, for example, to a crouching robot, Buerger said. A simple support element, such as a spring, would provide torque, reducing the load on the motor.

"The support elements also allow robots to self-adjust when they change behaviors. When they change from level walking to uphill walking, for example, they can make subtle adjustments to their joint dynamics to optimize efficiency under the new condition," Buerger said.

Robots must adapt to the diverse kinds of conditions expected in emergency response scenarios.
"Certain legged robot designs are extremely efficient when walking on level ground, but function extremely inefficiently under other conditions or cannot walk over different types of terrains. Robots need an actuation system to enable efficient locomotion in many different conditions," Buerger said. "That is what the adjustable support elements can do."

Early testing has shown STEPPR to operate efficiently and quietly.

"Noise is lost energy, so being quiet goes hand-in-hand with being efficient. Most robots make a lot of noise, and that can be a major drawback for some applications," Buerger said.

Robots' electronics, certain software to be publicly released

STEPPR's and WANDERER's electronics and low-level software are being developed by the Open Source Robotics Foundation. The designs will be publicly released, allowing engineers and designers all over the world to take advantage of advances.

The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition is developing energy-efficient walking control algorithms for both robots. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Globe Motors also are contributing to the project.

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Source: Sandia National Laboratories