Design of a mechanism to increase lateral force resistance of an autonomous ship hull cleaning robot

Marine biofoul accrues on ship hulls and increases the resistance of a ship during voyage. This is a widespread issue within the shipping an industry -- which supports the vast majority of global trade. To address this problem, we are developing Bio-Inspired HullCrawler -- an autonomous robot capable of cleaning ship hulls while a ship is underway. The novelty of our design centers on the bio-inspired suction cups that are cast as composite silicon elastomer. The purpose of this thesis is to look specifically at the lateral force resistance of elastomeric suction cup mechanisms. Here we propose new design concepts for the attachment system to improve on the drag force resistance of the HullCrawler device.

Name thesis:degree_name

Bachelor

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Morgan, Harith.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Douglas Hart.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/127897

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/127897