New Robotic Hull-Cleaning Solution

Norwegian marine coatings specialist Jotun and Kongsberg Maritime have jointly developed a robotic hull cleaning device called the HullSkater, designed to be carried with the vessel and deployed regularly to remove early-stage fouling.

The Jotun HullSkater cleaning machine is part of Jotun Hull Skating Solutions. HullSkater can inspect a 10,000m2 hull in approximately two hours. As a permanent member of crew, it is always on station, ready to clean all known fouling from the hull, which if left to accumulate causes increased drag leading to extra fuel consumption and emissions to air (GHG and CO2).

Jotun Hull Skating Solutions is the first solution developed for proactive bio-fouling control on ships and offers the potential to reduce fuel costs by around US$3.6 million and CO2 emissions by 12.5% annually, on a typical vessel.

As Jotun’s strategic partner on the HullSkater project since 2015, Kongsberg Maritime has contributed to the technology and know-how including development of secure remote control, cloud-based data storage, battery technology, acoustics and composite materials.

HullSkater also uses Kongsberg’s global communications infrastructure and Kognifai cloud ecosystem, both of which contribute to its ability to abolish significant performance losses caused by fouling and negate the need for waste collection.

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