Greensea IQ Unveils Latest EverClean Hull Maintenance Robot
Robotics company Greensea IQ has launched its most advanced EverClean service robot to date.
The company says the improvements represent a significant leap forward in the realm of supervised reliable autonomy with over-the-horizon operational capability for underwater hull maintenance.
OPENSEA is Greensea IQ’s extensively refined and modified software system that provides the robot's capability to deliver fast and efficient hull cleaning. The new EverClean robot features depth aided navigation, smarter obstacle avoidance, improved manoeuvring and enhanced user interaction capabilities. It also provides more precise hull relative navigation, a crucial evolution in making the robots faster and more efficient in cleaning ships.
The robot can autonomously cover areas up to 50 square meters on a ship’s hull, significantly reducing the level of operator oversight required at the ship’s side, effortlessly detecting obstacles, and pausing only where required for human intervention. Keep out zones are more intuitively defined within the software, and the likelihood of brush or coating damage, already very low, has been reduced even further.
The robot has an increased brush deck size, and it is able to double its production rate over that of the first EverClean robots. It also benefit from enhanced thrusters, markedly elevating responsiveness and control between operator and robot. These thrusters have already been proven to bolster the service robots’ stability, agility, and adaptability in dynamic conditions. Additionally, the thrusters have also been engineered for more efficient power utilization and optimized distribution within the system. This means that the robot can do more with fewer amps of power, both significantly prolonging cleaning times on hull, while reducing recharging frequency to enable maximum robot availability.
The EverClean robot uses fewer outsourced parts than predecessors, reducing production costs and improving manufacturability. Fewer high-risk and sole-source components mean a smaller, more robust supply chain leading to shorter build times to meet increased market demand.
These latest advancements in the robot follows EverClean’s recent launch of EverClean IQ. EverClean IQ leverages intelligent data collected during cleaning operations. Equipped with sensors and cameras, the robot can record brush pressure feedback which can be cross-referenced with prior readings using the highly accurate hull relative navigation system. This allows the EverClean IQ system to build a unique data set on each of the hulls it services.
More than just a very accurate 3D, XYZ-referenced hull map, this data set is also an ever-evolving knowledge base of areas of the hull where biofouling happens faster or more slowly, informing future coatings management and enhancing future robot cleaning efficiencies.
EverClean IQ aims to build the most comprehensive dataset on ship hull fouling. This initiative includes developing a digital validation process for clean hulls, empowering vessel owners with accurate information for informed decisions on maintenance and performance.