Page 12: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 2023)

Classi? cation

ScoutDI

ScoutDI has performed initial

REMOTE tests of its drone’s

SLAM capabilities in the cargo tank of the

Altera shuttle tanker

Beothuk Spirit.

SURVEY:

THE NEW

END-GAME

More than remote witnessing, more than remote data analysis, remote survey techniques are now going to aid the shift to full vessel autonomy.

By Wendy Laursen he technology that enables a robot to safely navi- gorithms are already at a level where they are comparable to gate an environment it has no prior knowledge of human surveyors when detecting defects in images. A drone is called Simultaneous Localization and Mapping that can take pictures of developing conditions from the same

T(SLAM). “It is the key to autonomy for any aspir- distance and with the same lighting helps the process.

ing can-do inspection robot.” That’s according to ScoutDI, a Other class societies are advancing corrosion arti? cial intel- participant in the REDHUS project led by DNV which is de- ligence (AI) including ABS which recently completed a pilot veloping a prototype inspection drone. project applying AI to the detection of corrosion and coating

SLAM is not a speci? c, copyrighted piece of technology. It breakdown in partnership with Google Cloud and SoftServe.

is the collective name for the computational problem of con- China Classi? cation Society is also developing systems for structing or updating a map of an unknown environment using corrosion and for gathering hull thickness measurements so technology, such as LIDAR and lasers, while at the same time that a drone or robotic crawler can transmit it to a surveyor keeping track of your location within it. Typically in ? ight a for real-time assessment. Xiang Linhao, an expert at the CCS drone prioritizes object detection and avoidance; afterwards Science & Technology Innovation and Test Center, says re- it undertakes the computation-intensive work of developing a mote surveys are moving beyond “remote witness” mode to fully detailed map. But the better it gets at doing this in ? ight, being a remote survey based on data, but this involves agree- the better it is at operating in spaces it has not visited before. ment between owner and class on aspects such as data ac-

Then all the pilot needs to do is supervise an inspection by quisition methods, interface protocols and exchange formats. pointing to locations in a 3D point cloud. Once established, high speed, low latency and high-volume

ScoutDI has performed initial tests of its drone’s SLAM ca- data transmission will enable the shift from traditional surveys pabilities in the cargo tank of the Altera shuttle tanker Beothuk to condition-based surveys and continuous status monitoring.

Spirit where it achieved with-centimeter accuracy in ? ight. It The hardware required for remote surveys should be techni- will ultimately be paired with DNV’s corrosion, crack and de- cally applicable to existing and older ships, says Masuaki Ura- formation algorithms. The corrosion and crack detection al- ta, General manager, Public Relations Team at ClassNK. How- 12 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • May 2023

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