New EU Project ”AUTOASSES”

We are glad to share with you that a new EU project will coming! Our Project ”AUTOASSES” awarded funding by European Union with the highest score 15/15. The Consortium consists of 16 Organisations (Universities, Research & Academic Entities, SMEs, Classification Society and Shipowners).

DANAOS will be fully involved in the System Integration, field testing and demonstration of Autoassess solution in Container Vessels.

Signifcant details for Autoasses can be found below.

Full title: Autonomous Aerial inspection of GNSS-denied and confined critical infrastructures

Project duration: 48 months

EU Grant Amount: 8.9 mln

Short Description

The >50k large vessels across the world must be regularly monitored for corrosion and defects by human surveyors, including dangerous and dirty confined GNSS-denied areas such as ballast water tanks and cargo holds. However, a radical new approach is possible using unmanned aerial systems (UAS or drones), by combining the latest developments in (1) collision-tolerant UAS, (2) multi-modal SLAM, (3) path planning, (4) autonomous drone racing, (5) aerial manipulation, (6) miniaturized NDT sensors, and (7) ML-based defect identification. Only through a complete integration of these technologies is it possible to address the challenges of deploying aerial robots in these challenging conditions. Equipped with automated AI-based scanning, mapping, navigation and contact-based NDT, this has the potential to completely remove the need for human inspection. Using a digital twin approach brings “superhuman” results.

The Overall Objective (OO) of the AUTOASSESS project is to remove human surveyors and workers from dangerous and dirty confined areas of offshore structures by employing an autonomous robotic system that exceeds human capabilities and is able to perform maritime vessel classifications.

AUTOASSESS conceptual approach is demonstrated in the following figure.