Twitter Pitch
A semi-autonomous drone used for ballast tank inspection that is able to fly through narrow spaces and make a map of the environment.
Description
The inspection of ballast tanks in ships can be dangerous work. The air has to be ventilated before entering, visibility is bad to nonexistent, the floor and walls are slippery, there are many obstacles to navigate through and not everything is within hand’s reach.
RiMS B.V. (short RiMS) saw the opportunity to make this work a lot safer by using robots to inspect the tanks. This enables the inspector to stay safely outside the tanks while the robot inspects the environment and presents possible problems to its operator together with the location of the problem.
RiMS contacted Delft University of Technology to make this robot a reality and the Delft University of Technology cooped it under the "Minor Robotica" project. During this project six students create a prototype robot that will achieve the requirements of the customer: RiMS. The students have named the project as project AIR, which stands for Autonomous Inspection Robot.
