Robotic inspection of ships: inherent challenges and assessment of their effectiveness

Inspection is a key aspect of any structural maintenance programme, including that of ship and offshore structures with a long-lasting history of service failures. Ship surveys for construction, verification, repair and conversion are intrinsically hazardous that are mainly performed by human surveyors. The ROBINS project (ROBotics technology for INspection of Ships) is an EU Horizon 2020 collaborative project aimed at addressing possible advantages of robotic technologies for ship inspections and facing corresponding challenges. Within the project framework, gaps and drawbacks in the application of robotic technologies were identified, from both technological and regulatory viewpoints. Solutions were suggested and developed through laboratory and field trials. Results indicate that cost-effective robotic assistants can be successfully introduced in the marine structure maintenance routine, if appropriate assessments of technologies and application procedures are carried out in advance according to validation schemes, such as the standard verification process recommended in this paper.