Unmanned Engine Room Surveillance Using an Autonomous Mobile Robot

Abstract

With the rapid advances in science and technology, ships that do not require any crew on board (i.e., autonomous ships) are being actively researched. Several studies on unmanned ships are in progress, and unmanned engine room studies are also being conducted. These studies mainly focus on engine failure prediction and diagnosis, but have not paid sufficient attention to various abnormal situations. Accordingly, this study focusses on the surveillance of engine rooms and abnormal situations using autonomous mobile robots. The abnormal situation considered in this study was a fire that could be highly dangerous if it occurred in the ship’s engine room. A map of the engine room was created using an autonomous robot, and when a destination was set on the map, a path was found, and the engine room was surveilled by autonomously moving by tracking the path. When a fire is detected during surveillance, the coordinates of the fire are converted so that the autonomous mobile robot can use them and move to a new destination. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the autonomous mobile robot’s movement performance, fire detection performance, and performance in the engine room. In terms of movement performance evaluation, the arrival rate to the destination was 88% on average, and the fire detection performance was a 0.9833 detection rate, 0 false alarm rate, and 0.9916 accuracy. The performance evaluation in the engine room confirmed that the fire was detected while driving, and the destination was changed to a new destination by coordinate conversion and driving was performed autonomously. Through this, it was confirmed that it is possible to surveil the engine room using an autonomous mobile robot, which contributes towards the development of unmanned engine room and ship safety.