Autonomous Hull Grooming Vehicle

The Navy is continuing development of Autonomous Hull Grooming, or light underwater hull cleaning, to be systematically applied to ship underwater hulls as a proactive means to better control marine biofouling of vessels in port and at anchor.  Further development of this technology is being considered as an alternative to larger, diver operated multi-brush hull cleaning systems.       This effort's objective is to continue technology development initiated under prior ONR STTR work in support of Navy STTR 2018.A -Topic N18A-T020 Autonomous Hull Grooming Vehicle. This NAVSEA SBIR effort focuses on development, testing and integrated field evaluation of navigation and control that advances autonomy and the overall capabilities of a tethered hull crawler vehicle to minimize operational manning required for effective hull grooming.  This effort is not a “start from scratch” effort to develop a tethered vehicle design but builds upon progress in system development and functionality already achieved to date.       Major aspects of non-magnetic hull attachment and brush based grooming tool development are considered sufficiently mature for transitional use at a technology readiness level of 7 or 8. Navigation, positioning, and control for greater autonomy are at a lower level of development and have not been similarly fielded with vehicle-to-hull attachment and rotary grooming tools functionalities.   For hull grooming to be cost effective, a higher level of integrated functional autonomy is needed and considered a priority for enabling minimal manning for use on Navy vessels in production environments.  To date, a tethered AUV hull crawler approach has proven to be an effective platform for balancing size, power and energy relationships as well as well as in meeting communications bandwidth requirements for supporting real time control and high data rates to the surface for imaging and telemetry.       For autonomous and semi-autonomous hull grooming operations, unmanned tether management schemes need further development and testing.  Automating tether management is critical for operating multiple grooming vehicles to achieve cost effective coverage and production rates with reduced on-site labor.       Objectives:     Further develop navigation, positioning, and control of the integrated grooming vehicle platform to ensure coverage and impact on hull coatings while operating multiple systems to achieve effective productivity.  Initially, achieve a high level of autonomy for manually configured work areas while working to maintain autonomy.     As practicality and funding constraints allow, perform long term testing of grooming on a DDG or similar vessel to further establish the efficacy of grooming beyond that of earlier large panel time series testing by the Florida Institute of Technology, Center for Corrosion and Biofouling Control (FIT/CCBC) and other follow-on efforts made in support of grooming technology development and the prior ONR STTR.