An Underwater Inspection System to Detect Hull Defects of a Ship

수중용 선체외판 길함 검사용 장치 개발

After building a ship in a shipyard, there are so many repeated inspection of welding seam defects and painting status before delivering to the ship's owner. An inspection on the bottom part of a ship in commercial service should be done in every two years for the purpose of safety and for the prevention of ship speed deterioration. conventional welding seam inspection systems are rely on the visual inspection by human or the ultrasonic inspection for the selective part of a ship. This paper suggests a remote controlled inspection system for the examination of large ships or steel structures. The proposed system moves in contact with the ship under inspection and have a CCD camera to provide visual-guidance information to a remotely located human worker. Additionally this system utilizes a weld line tracking algorithm for an optimal position control. We verified the effectiveness of the inspection system by experimental data.