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Autonomous ships raise the issue of emergency and routine maintenance. Challenges include AI, robotics and secure communications.
Technological advances in robotics are revolutionizing several industry sectors, and the maritime market is no exception. Process automation and the implementation of robots on autonomous ships are transforming the way operations are carried out, bringing greater efficiency and safety to the sector. FMD is one of the companies that has invested in research and development of robotics for the engine room, aiming to improve maintenance and repair practices for autonomous ships.
The future of robotics in the maritime environment
The FMD team that Trey Taylor leads is relatively new, starting in 2019 with a basic product that analyzed monitoring equipment, 'being able to provide that information to our technical teams for diagnostics and also provide some data to the end customer for self-evaluation. '. support.' But that was just the beginning, and in 2020, Taylor's team asked the executive team for more. The result was 'a roadmap for five product verticals we were interested in: IA, autonomy, robotics, mixed reality capability and secure communications. '
In developing robotic solutions for routine and emergency work and engine room repairs, Taylor credits his boss, FMD CEO George Whittier, for instilling his principle: 'Don't aim at the target, aim where the target will be'.
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So, Taylor and his team of 22 people started taking a closer look at one of their main customers – US Navy. "We know that the Navy has a need, a desire to fuel unmanned capabilities at some point later this decade, and the timeframe that they want those capabilities to be deployed without intervention is today only 30 to 60 days," Taylor said. . 'But the goal of long term is 180 days, so our team began looking for systems to help the Navy reach that goal. We quickly came to the conclusion that we would have to do manutenção, but how do we do maintenance when there is no human on board?' Enter the robot.
"You'll need different resources at different times," Taylor said. 'For example, if I'm doing something on an engine, I might need to be able to lift and support 150-200 pounds; but I may also need very precise manipulation of small accessories to remove this part. So I probably won't have a two-armed, bipedal robot. I'll have a robot that can lean on a rail or a bulkhead for this heavy lifting, and it might have four arms, two rough motion arms that can handle the heavy lifting, and then two skilled arms that are doing the work. perfect. fixing movements.
Image courtesy of FMD
Perspectives of maritime robotics
Today, FMD's work is not focused on a single solution, but on a series of different manifestations of how engine room robotics will look and function. "We decided that a robotic platform would probably be the right approach, but we wanted to make sure we understood the issues and understood the actual product requirements that a robot would have to facilitate," Taylor said, a process that meant understanding the company's long-term roadmap. Navy. As is customary in the maritime space, there is rarely if ever a 'one size fits all' technical solution based on the wide variety of ship designs. 'There are many important challenges to working in a marine environment,' Taylor said. 'I have bulkheads I have to pass through; I have confined spaces and open spaces. In some cases, I may want a bulkhead-mounted robotic platform; in some cases, I will travel on rails; In some cases, I will be asked to move through the space with a crawled or walking design. So when we look at the robotic platform, today we're really focused on modularity and those subcomponents.'
In addition to mechanics, the operating environment is taken into consideration. 'How do I do the job when I'm in a six-foot-high chute on a vessel moving at 20 knots?' asks Taylor. 'A human being is very good at discovering their own stabilization, three points of contact, a hand holding a tool. A robot should be able to do the same thing.' By reducing it to its essence, Taylor said it would be imagined as Legos.
Towards the autonomy of maritime robotics
'There are essential components that every robot will need: some basic autonomy, some Basic AI, the way you train him. to move, the way you control it remotely, vision systems, etc., which are common items on the platform. But then, when I think about all the equipment that I'm going to change or interact with, I might need 15, 20 different tools of different sizes. I will need different lifting capacities; and all this requires that our platform is able to adapt to it; Automatically swap parts to go to a specific work location or different settings on that robot. But I want a common control methodology; I want a common billing methodology; I want a common autonomy methodology.'
Ultimately, it comes down to the guiding principle surrounding any complex technology: keep it simple, which is much easier said than done.
The role of robotics in the engine room
"You'll need different resources at different times," Taylor said. 'For example, if I'm doing something on an engine, I might need to be able to lift and support 150-200 pounds; but I may also need very precise manipulation of small accessories to remove this part. So I probably won't have a two-armed, bipedal robot. I'll have a robot that can lean on a rail or a bulkhead for this heavy lifting, and it might have four arms, two rough motion arms that can handle the heavy lifting, and then two skilled arms that are doing the work. perfect. fixing movements.
Ultimately, if successful with widespread adoption, the use of robotics in the engine room could change the actual design of the engine itself. In the beginning, robotics must be designed to conduct its business as if it were a human, so at a minimum, FMD is designing [the robotics] to be equivalent to a human in strength and range of motion.
Challenges in the development and implementation of maritime robotics
But as autonomy gains momentum, there will be a gap. "It will be a small gap between when these crewless vessels start to roll out and before there are enough of them in the fleet for capital equipment providers to redesign their systems for robotic support," Taylor said. 'So we have to fill a gap where we have equivalent human performance in many cases, for tool manipulation, for reaching, for degrees of freedom of movement, the kinematics of actually moving parts in and out of a piece of equipment, for example: we are taking this into account in our projects today.'
'Today, we are in what we call generation 0.2, where we have a prototype that moves. We have limited sensing control capabilities on board, but there is a lot of data-driven research we need to do to influence the next generation. We are currently undergoing a scientific evaluation of the basic and main maintenance procedures for an engine, where we are mapping: How many connections are there? What are the sizes? How much volume do I have to perform services as a human? How much torque do I need at any individual connection in these maintenance procedures? We're doing this documentation right now, as we speak, on our engines, which will probably take us through the entire year [2023]', with the plan to have a base platform by 2025.
As published in December 2023 issue of Maritime Reporter & Engineering News. Watch the full interview with Trey Taylor on Maritime Reporter TV:
Image courtesy FMD
Technology Collaborative Sea Freight
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