Development of an Underwater Anticorrosion Coating Maintenance Robot

Abstract

The maintenance of anti-corrosion coatings on underwater steel structures is crucial for ensuring their structural integrity and extending service life. However, current manual maintenance methods are labor-intensive, costly, and risky, highlighting the necessity of developing underwater robots to achieve efficient and automated maintenance. To achieve automated underwater surface coating maintenance, this study designed an underwater coating robot. Based on analysis of underwater coating maintenance procedure and environmental factors, the overall robot components are designed, including adhering and moving chassis, surface preparation tool, coating applying tool and water clearing tool. On the basis of robot design, experiments and computer simulation were conducted to verify the grinding and coating capability of the coating maintenance robot. Experimental results indicate that the proposed robot is capable of underwater coating repair tasks.