Stakeholder Perceptions of Using Aerial Drones for Inspecting Ships to Be Dismantled

Ships will eventually become waste when reaching the end of their operational lives. As part of the sound and safe ship recycling, it is mandatory to inspect ships before dismantling them. The inspection is usually done by experts who perform visual inspection and do tests in any areas deemed to have potential risks to humans. This paper presents a study conducted as part of the SHEREC project, which aims to reduce safety risks to workers in the ship recycling industry by using robotic systems. This paper investigates stakeholder perspectives on using drones for inspecting ships to be dismantled. We interviewed 13 participants who worked in the ship recycling industry to explore the benefits and challenges of using drones for inspecting ships to be dismantled. The results from the interviews indicate three potential benefits of using drones in this context, which are (1) inspecting high structures of a ship, (2) inspecting confined spaces in a ship, (3) making preparations before sending people to take samples. The participants also saw five challenges that may exist when using drones for inspecting ships to be dismantled, such as (1) the need to send people to open all doors prior to the drone inspection, (2) the lack of capability to inspect tight and narrow spaces of a ship, (3) the inability to perform destructive sampling, (4) the potential to disturb asbestos, and (5) the influence of the ship’s walls on the drone’s signal. Furthermore, the participants also provided four suggestions that could be considered to make drones more suitable for inspecting ships, which are (1) having drones in smaller sizes, (2) equipping drones with gas sensors, (3) installing non-destructive sampling tools on drones, (4) and geo-tagging pictures and videos taken by drones.