Development of Unmanned Surface Vehicle "i-Boat2" for Inspection of Underside of Pier and Its Autonomous Navigation Experiments

The number of port facilities in Japan that were constructed more than 50 years ago is rapidly increasing. Therefore, it is necessary to take measures to ensure the safety and maintain the functionality of the facilities. However, in conventional inspections, inspectors board a boat and use a camera to take pictures of cracks, peeling and other defects on the wall surface to analyze the degree of deterioration, which requires a huge amount of time and money. Therefore, in this study, we have developed an unmanned surface vehicle for efficient inspection of the underside of piers. This paper proposes a sway suppression control and a path following control, and reports the results of autonomous navigation experiments using the robot in a real ocean environment.