A demo at the Neptune Robotics facility in Shenzhen shows one of the company's robots in a room built to simulate the curvature of a ship’s hull and muddy water conditions.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergUnderwater Robots Are Helping Maritime Shipping Clean Up Its Act
A growing army of machines is improving ships’ fuel efficiency by scraping algae, seaweed and barnacles off their hulls.
Inch by inch, Jacky Im’s robot climbs a 32-foot (10-meter) steel wall while he watches closely. Each of the 660-pound (300-kilogram) machine’s moves is captured by sensors and compared to a pre-programmed route. Im is so stringent about his robot’s obedience that he wants to catch every wrong turn, even those that can’t be seen with the naked eye.
He’s not a control freak for fun, though. Im is co-founder of Hong Kong-based Neptune Robotics, a six-year-old startup that deploys waterproof robots to tackle a major challenge facing the maritime industry: decarbonization.