Underwater Antifouling Crawler

NAVSEA 04, through the National Center for Manufacturing Services (NCMS), has issued a Phase III SBIR contract to Boston Engineering to advance a commercial above water hull vacuum-hold traversing technology (Vacuum Crawler) developed by International Climbing Machines (ICM). Boston Engineering is under contract to redesign a commercial robotic system with components appropriate for defense applications, including addressing ruggedization, design for manufacturing, cybersecurity, and system certification. Boston Engineering previously conceptually designed a means to convert the above water crawler to operate underwater as part of the execution of SBIR N161-044 to develop Maritime Ultraviolet Antifouling (MUVA) capability. Therefore, we have shown how use one system could be designed to operate above and below water with minimum configuration changes. A system is proposed that will have over 50% of its design leverageable for this program (N231-031), including open architecture software, electronics, and user interface. Advances for the proposed underwater variant will include packaging design appropriate for underwater operation, specific navigation capability for boat and ship hulls, and the automation required to deliver the desired cavitation jetting to remove biofouling. An advantage of vacuum- or suction-hold is the ability to operate on non-ferrous surfaces, such as SHT: Anechoic coating. The envisioned robotic delivery technology uses compliant tracks enabling the ability to traverse non-smooth surfaces and most protrusions typical on the hull surface, including slopes (e.g., conformal arrays) and ridges. Fine positioning features of a robotic arm are compared with simpler but equally effective set of controlled, fixed nozzles on the front of the delivery system.