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Minor Mechatronics projects succesfully demonstrated in the basin at the RDM

One of the areas of interest of the Rotterdam University of Bachelor Engineering is that of Autonomous ships. On a regular base, groups of students or individual students are given assignments to conduct research on subjects important for this area. One of these subjects is the desire to have modular propulsion & steering units that can easily be installed on board very small autonomous ships (referred to as ‘Aquabots’) and that can also be easily adjusted to accommodate different types of aquabot designs.

The students Menno Bakker, Job Kemner, Ruben van Sierenberg de Boer and Pim Koolmees have taken on this challenge as “Minor Mechatronics” project and they presented their results installed on one of the aqua bots in the small basin of the Aqualab at the RDM premises in Rotterdam.

From their laptop they were able to address their design of two rotatable thrusters thereby steering the aquabot, equipped with their rotatable propulsion solutions, successfully through the basin.

Another group of students (Ivan Boele, Joey van Oosterhout, Djordy van Ringelesteijn and Wessel Pluim) took on the challenge to design an indoor positioning system to provide an accurate position of an aquabot sailing in the Aqualab basin. Such a system is essential for enabling experiments with autonomous aquabots in that basin. That group was at the last moment confronted with a technical problem when presenting their results. Nevertheless, despite the pressure of having their final presentation, they succeeded to overcome the problem and concluded with a successful presentation of a working indoor positioning system.

PK Marine congratulates both groups with their successful completion of the assignment and wishes them success in the continuation of their study.

A fully-autonomous ship, by some referred to as ‘Robotic ship’ is characterized by its ability to sail safely from port to port without direct interference from some (remote) human operator. In order to do that, it requires a crucial ability of its human operated equivalent i.e. the ability to exchange information with entities in its environment such as other ships, harbor authorities, service agencies and back office to adjust its operation when necessary, to identify the intentions of other ships and to get support when it runs into authorization limits.

For his bachelor thesis at Rotterdam University of Applied Science (department Shipping & Transportation), Sebastian Cornet was asked to investigate what navigation tasks are essential for safe navigation and to make the first steps on identifying what type of information exchange is conducted to execute those tasks.

  • Some of that has to be done by speech/VHF, so a robotic ship requires the ability to conduct a conversion; speech recognition technology applied on smart phones and in cars can be done will provide a good starting point
  • Some of that can be done by digital information exchange e.g. by AIS
Sebastian analysed IMO and Solas rules and studies about autonomous sailing to formulate a list of 11 crucial navigation tasks that have to be conducted on board. Subsequently, he validated this list on board a sea ship (during an assignment as candidate officer) with aid of his colleague officers. Further aided by his University supervisor (Mister Weeke) and PK Marine (Doctor van der Klugt) he wrote a convincing graduation report that not only described why the selected tasks are relevant and that others can be as easily conducted at the shore by the back-office and by others, he also regarded the means to exchange the information: Peter and Sebastian before the poster that summarises the study results
  • Some of that has to be done by speech/VHF, so a robotic ship requires the ability to conduct a conversion; speech recognition technology applied on smart phones and in cars can be done will provide a good starting point.
  • Some of that can be done by digital information exchange e.g. by AIS.

Thereby, he provided an excellent beginning for the next step towards the Artificial Ship Navigator i.e. the phrases that are used to exchange the information that is essential for navigation tasks.

See for more information his Bacheler thesis (190131 Bacheler thesis Sebastiaan Cornet Autonoom) and his summarizing poster (190308 SebCor – Poster).

 

Pedestrians and bicyclists experience serious obstacles when travelling to and through the harbor areas of Rotterdam.
When moving from East to West and back, they also have to make substantial detours in order to cross the many harbors with their usually inaccessible industrial areas.

Imagine a transportation system comprising dozens, may be hundreds, of electric, fully-autonomous, ferries that operate in the same manner as  the elevators in an extremely high and large building; the main difference is that, rather than from floor to floor, they move autonomously from stop to stop along and across the various waters of Rotterdam (using technology like that of autonomous cars). At each stop, people may press a button that they want to go left or right and, on the ferry, they press the stop where they want to go to. This is the Autonomous Hitch-hikers Ferry Concept or AH-F.

Despite this simple description, the realization is rather complex. A full solution requires amongst others

  • small (<12 persons) battery driven ferries that are easy accessible for pedestrians, bicyclists, elderly, children etc., each ferry has to be unsinkable with protective means against falling into the water
  • small AH-F-stops at quays with protective means against falling into the water, with re-charge facilities for a AH-Ferry, with payment functionalities and with gate facilities to limit the number of persons on a AH-Ferry
  • small facilities to interact with traffic control, to call for support if people on board have serious problems and to get support in case of technical problems
  • small facilities on board, at each AH-F stop and at Smart phones that inform the users when/where a AH-Ferry will arrive and how much space is on board

PK Marine has assigned an enthusiast group of 5 PI-students of the Rotterdam University of Applied Science with the task to investigate whether or not this concept is attractive to cross to reduce the biking distance between Schiedam, Rotterdam and the RDM-campus area and thus to lighten the traffic pressure on the few river crossings in that area. Their supervisor is Pim Warffemius.


Success Ville, Helena, Shaq, Siemen and Jesse with your PI assignment.

PK Marine at the Innovation Expo 2018 in Rotterdam

IE2018 (Innovation Expo 2018) was this time organized at the RDM premises, the same place where PK Marine conducts its R&D activities together with students and teachers from Rotterdam University of Applied Science (and young start-up companies (Viralcom, Infinovation, MH Marine, and others).

That made it only natural for PK Marine to have a presence at this Exposition and demonstrate with its partners some of the first cooperation results:

  • Small boats that can be controlled remotely or autonomously with ability to detect and avoid obstacles, the first stage of realizing fully-autonomous maritime measurement systems suited for harbour- and inland-water conditions;
  • A detector (the egg shown to the right) that can listen underwater and learn to recognize sounds. Ideas to use that ability are to locate a.o. where someone is drowning, divers, ships in the vicinity and more.
Simic, Hurkmans and Boon at IE2018

In the discussions with the public attracted by this stand, also the other aspects of this cooperation were high-lighted:

  • How education institutes presented by students and teachers can benefit from cooperation with small enterprises with a high level of experience
  • How students help old hands to keep an open mind rather than become hampered by relying too much on their experience
  • The long-term vision of developing plug & play components from which it becomes more easy to realise dedicated autonomous vessel designs.