US 2024/0051645 A1Published application

Underwater robot for removing marine biofouling from hulls of floating units, with system for containing and capturing waste

AssigneesPetroleo Brasileiro S.A. - Petrobras, ServiçO Nacional De Aprendizagem Industrial - Departamento Regional Da Bahia-Senai/Dr/Ba

InventorsMarcelo Luiz LIGEIRO BARBOSA, Edisiene DE SOUZA CORREIA, Lucas SARMENTO NEVES DA ROCHA, Edna DOS SANTOS ALMEIDA, Mateus DOS SANTOS DE MENESES, Carlos Eduardo DA SILVA JORGE, Frederico GARCIA DE OLIVEIRA, Luis Carlos MORENO LEDEZMA, Alexandro QUIRINO DA SILVA, Joaquim RANYERE SANTANA DE OLIVEIRA, Valter ESTEVÃO BEAL, Saulo QUEIROZ FIGLIUOLO, Danilo MARQUES FERREIRA, Gustavo DOS SANTOS CUNHA, Érika DURÃO VIEIRA

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Abstract

The present invention relates to a remotely operated underwater robot device for removing marine biofouling, mainly aimed at organisms such as sun coral, settled on hulls of floating units for transporting oil and derivatives thereof, or on exploration and production platforms. The system comprises a remotely operated robot that removes the marine biofouling from said hulls, without damaging the hull, containing and capturing the waste. It is an intelligent device that is capable of operating in two modes: as an ROV to allow it to travel through the water, and as a crawler to perform the actual functions of removing the macrofouling containing sun coral and the functions resulting therefrom. It has non-georeferenced reference systems using acoustic elements to facilitate location by the operator. It uses computer vision to enter the parking areas without human assistance. It contains thrusters for controlling aquatic movements and self-levelling systems with control of the centre-of-buoyancy dynamics, and has wheels for movement, which can be electromagnets or a set of wheels that works in conjunction with a magnetic fastening system, both with variation in the coupling force. It has either a system for removing, containing, capturing and crushing the biofouling or a removal system using cavitation and mechanical impact that can have an approximate height of 30 centimetres, normally applied to sun coral.

Claims37

Dependent claims

An underwater robot for removal of marine bio-scaling from hulls of floating units, containing accessory components such as cameras, sonar sensors, acoustic systems, laser scanner, artificial light source, set of wheels surrounded by magnetic tracks, thrusters, characterized in that comprising:

a set of sensors to compose the non-georeferential location system containing a transponder (12) in USBL standards located on the outside, and on the inside of the robot there are the sensors of the INS system (33), a depth sensor (31), two altimeters (32), set of cameras (10) and led illuminators (9), Ultrawide camera (28), multibeam sonar (24), mechanical sonar (27), wherein, through the fusion of data, it is possible to map the position and allows perceiving the environment through a computational architecture;
the open chassis is divided into three modules:
front (2), central (3) and rear (4), which are connected by active cylinders to aid in the adaptability of the system on surfaces with large radii;
a bio-scaling removal, capture, containment and crushing system in the front module (2);
flow rate sensor (29) arranged in the fluid transport piping (6);
particle sensor (25) arranged on the front of the robot;
set of cameras (26) for the operator's vision located on the side, front and rear parts, creating a full-time 360° coverage;
individual suspension system for each tensioning wheel (18), these containing a track formed by electromagnets with a grading control in the imposition of the adhesion forces to the metallic surface;
dynamic buoyancy system (37) containing air reservoirs (7) that combined with the Thrusters (05) allows a change in the dynamics of the robot movement when submerged.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.