The MINOAS project: Marine INspection rObotic Assistant System

In this paper an overall description of the MINOAS project is reported. The project proposes an innovative approach to improve ship inspection methodology, complementing human personnel with cutting-edge robotic platforms, able to autonomously carry out inspection tasks, allowing in this way the human operators to ´virtually´ execute the inspection from a control room. This paper provides an overview of the project motivations, concept and goals, specifications of the MINOAS system, in particular with respect to an accurate analysis of the tasks executed during vessel inspections, the proposed overall architecture and the classes of robots that will be considered as a possible help to the human inspector.