MINOAS a Marine INspection rObotic Assistant: system requirements and design

A presentation of the project Marine INspection rObotic Assistant System (MI-NOAS) is given. It proposes the re-engineering of the overall vessel inspection methodology, by introducing an innovative system concept that integrates human personnel with high locomotion enabled robots, effectively tele-porting the human inspector from the vessel's hold to a control room with virtual reality properties. Project motivations, requirements and basic architecture are discussed as well as the locomotion techniques which will be evaluated, if necessary, through prototyping of ad-hoc mobile robots.