Quality inspection of vessel/ship without human involvement : Current trends and future developments

Ships and vessel conditions demand regular assessment to maintain their safety. In the traditional environment, their assessment was conducted using surveys and complex and time-consuming operations. But now, with the emergence of Industry 4.0 where intelligence and smart devices serve the imagery, drone-based, and many other alternative methods for inspection, the subject is obtaining considerable interest. The concept is highly effective with low cost and less disruption delivering a safer inspection approach. This study has examined Industry 4.0 technology as a quality inspection technique of a ship/vessel, examined drone-based ship inspection techniques for quality inspection of the ship/vessel without human involvement, to analyse robotic underwater surveillance methods for quality inspection of the ship/vessel, and to identify vision-based corrosion detection techniques for quality inspection of the ship/vessel. In the finding, it was revealed ship inspection through Industry 4.0 technology and other techniques can help the marine industries rely more on automated systems to gather the information that is required to be capable of authenticating process and product conformance also they can reduce human error, risks and uncover useful insights from the gathered vessel/ship data.