Modular Multi-Domain Aware Autonomous Surface Vehicle for Inspection

Abstract

A growing interest in ocean exploration for scientific and commercial research has been shown, mainly due to the technological developments for maritime and offshore industries. The use of Autonomous surface vehicles (ASV) have a promising role to revolutionize the transportation, monitorization, operation and maintenance areas, allowing to perform distinct task from offshore assets inspection to harbor patrolling. This work presents SENSE, an autonomouS vEssel for multi-domaiN inSpection and maintEnance. It provides an open-source hardware and software architecture that is easy to replicate for both research institutes and industry. This is a multi-purpose vehicle capable of acquiring multi-domain data for inspecting and reconstructing maritime infrastructures. SENSE provides a research platform which can increase the situational awareness capabilities for ASVs. SENSE full configuration provides multimodal sensory data acquired from both domains using a Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR), a stereoscopic camera, and a multibeam echosounder. In addition, it supplies navigation information obtained from a real-time kinematic satellite navigation system and inertial measurement units. Moreover, the tests performed at the harbor of Marina de Leça, at Porto, Portugal, resulted in a dataset which captures a fully operational harbor. It illustrates several conditions on maritime scenarios, such as undocking and docking examples, crossings with other vehicles and distinct types of moored vessels. The data available represents both domains of the maritime scenario, being the first public dataset acquired for multi-domain observation using a single vehicle. This paper also provides examples of applications for navigation and inspection on multi-domain scenarios, such as odometry estimation, bathymetric surveying and multi-domain mapping.INDEX TERMS Maritime robotics, 3D perception, heterogeneous sensors, maritime dataset, multi-domain data.

Nautilus: An autonomous surface vehicle with a multilayer software architecture for offshore inspection

“…It is equipped with a visual camera, sonar, hydrophones, anemometer, GPS, and IMU for perceiving the scenario and is capable of detecting obstacles and path planning, where each model was tested independently on a lake. Campos et al (2022) developed the SENSE a modular catamaran-like ASV capable of gathering multidomain data using a 3D LiDAR and an MBES, suitable to operate with favorable weather conditions and in calm waters. Multidomain commercial solutions are starting to emerge, namely, the Teledyne Z-Boat 1800RP 1 and the HydroCat-180 2 which gather data from a sonar and a 3D LiDAR for coastal and offshore applications, respectively.…”

Exploring Autonomous and Remotely Operated Vehicles in Offshore Structure Inspections

“…Similarly, the industry has shown a recent interest in using autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the inspection of ocean structures that are above the sea water, as shown by [21]. These emerging technologies have established themselves as essential tools due to their distinct advantages and benefits.…”

“…The use of autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) for offshore platform inspection and monitoring has gained significant attention in recent years. ASVs are autonomous vehicles that can perform various tasks, including monitoring and surveying harbors, bathymetry and depth evaluations, and inspection and maintenance of offshore infrastructures [21,97]. Furthermore, ASVs are particularly valuable for conducting inspections and performing maintenance on offshore infrastructures [98].…”

“…Similarly, ref. [21] proposes an unmanned surface inspection and maintenance vehicle, the SENSE (autonomouS vEssel for multi-domaiN inSpection and maintEnance), which provides the versatility to adapt to the most suitable payload to observe above and below the sealevel environment according to the task requirements. Finally, we can mention the TIDEWISE company that developed the ASV TUPAN (Figure 10b), which is specifically designed for environmental monitoring and surveying.…”

Under Seawater Capacitive Power Transfer for Maritime Charging Applications

“…Unmanned maritime vehicles (UMVs) have attracted considerable attention in recording oceanographic observations, studying climate change, and observing marine pollution. They can operate autonomously in challenging and hazardous shallow or deep water [1]. Both surface and underwater UMVs have been extensively used in marine exploitation investigation and emergency search rescue [2], [3].…”