Robot offers greener hull cleaning service

European engineers and researchers have developed a robot that is able to remove marine growth from a ship’s hull. HISMAR, the Hull Identification System for Marine Autonomous Robotics, was developed under European Union funds and will be unveiled at SMM in Hamburg, Germany next week.

“Marine growth on ships is a huge environmental and financial problem for the marine industry and HISMAR offers a unique solution to both of these, and more,” said Newcastle University’s professor Tony Roskilly, who is leading the project.

The robot automatically charts a map of the hull, records the location of every weld, thickness change, rivet and indentation on the ship?s surface. Adjustable jets of pressurised sea water blast the marine growth off the surface of the ship, which is then sucked up into the main chamber where it is then filtered and the bio-fouling removed and rendered harmless to the local environment at a rate of 150 litres of water a minute.

“What we have created is a system that works totally independently, in or out of the water, and not only keeps the ship clean but also feeds back vital information about the hull?s condition. Because the map it follows is so detailed, if there is a change to its path caused by corrosion or a crack in the steel then it feeds this information back. This means it can be used as an additional check on the seaworthiness of the ship?s hull or highlight potential future problems,” Roskilly added.

Cleaning of the hull ensures the vessel maintains the lowest possible resistance which has an extremely large impact on the fuel consumed by reducing emissions and operating costs. The project is estimated to have cost around 1.7 million Euros and a prototype will be available at SMM.