JollyRoger

Problem Description

There has been great ongoing research in autonomous ships which navigate across long distances without much human intervention. However, human staff is still required to perform tasks like maintenance on the ship, rendering the benefits from the automated driving less useful. Our project addresses this problem by creating a robot which could autonomously operate electromechanical devices. With the addition of what we call ShipBot, autonomous ships can be self-maintained to a greater degree, reducing the need of onboard human operators, essentially cutting labor cost while reducing risks.

This project provides a proof-of-concept mechatronic device capable of operating without modifying the existing human-operated devices. The device should be able to complete the tasks in the confined boundaries of the ship and the short period of allowed time to be a feasible solution to this problem of retrofitting maritime autonomy onto existing ships.