Publication
Design and Control of MIRA: a Lightweight Climbing Robot for Ship Inspection
Mohammed Ahmed; Markus Eich; Felix Bernhard
In: World Symposium on Mechatronics Engineering & Applied Physics (WSMEAP2014). International Conference on Mechatronics Engineering (ICME-2014), June 18-20, Sousse, Tunisia, Pages 58-62, IEEE, 6/2014.
Abstract
The inspection of marine vessels is currently performed manually. Inspectors use tools (e.g. cameras and devices for non-destructive testing) to detect damaged areas, cracks, and corrosion in large cargo holds, tanks, and other parts of a ship. Due to the size and complex geometry of most ships, ship inspection is time-consuming and expensive. The EU-funded project INCASS develops concepts for a marine inspection robotic assistant system to improve and automate ship inspections. In this paper, we introduce our magnetic wall–climbing robot: Marine Inspection Robotic Assistant (MIRA). This semiautonomous lightweight system is able to climb a vessels steel frame to deliver on-line visual inspection data. In addition, we describe the design of the robot and its building subsystems as
well as its hardware and software components.