Rising Star of the week: Blue Atlas Robotics

A new concept is coming to life at EUROPORT 2021, the Rising Stars Pavilion powered by MARPRO. An area fully  dedicated for promising maritime start-ups and next-gen innovators, where they can demonstrate how they contribute to a smarter, cleaner or/safer maritime future.

EUROPORT’s and MARPRO’s intention is to provide small start-ups a fair chance of showing their products and services to a large audience like EUROPORT is, for a budget friendly participation fee.

Company profile: Blue Atlas Robotics

Since the news aired officially, the call to maritime start-ups has been answered and a great deal of interest has been shown to participate.

Blue Atlas Robotics is a Danish start-up which uses high-precision, advanced photogrammetry techniques
to inspect ports, vessels, and other marine structures below the water’s surface. The result is high quality video, imagery, and interactive 3D surface area maps, allowing you to document your assets in fine detail. Make acquaintance of Blue Atlas Robotics in the following interview:

What is the idea behind Blue Atlas Robotics and its services?

Founded in 2018 by Carl Chatfield, we are based on the vision of providing high quality underwater images. Today the technology has been developed into an autonomous underwater inspection robot, that enables near range imaging by use of computer vision-based navigation. With the ability to maintain near-range constant distance during the autonomous inspection process, video streams from the six on-board cameras aided by the precise positioned light system, enabling the robot to overcome low visibility conditions down to 25 cm and still produce high quality images, outperforming inspection results from manually controlled ROV or divers. The robot can inspect 900 m2/hour, being a vessel hull, quay walls, etc. The precise and consistent way images have been collected, allows for us to produce 3D-digital twins in large scale through use of photogrammetry, beyond the capabilities of any other supplier on the market today.

How can Blue Atlas Robotics contribute to a smarter maritime future?

Our autonomous underwater inspection technology collects consistent, high-quality data of a high density. The data, often consisting of  more than 100.000 individual pictures, is processed into full-colour, texturized 3D digital twin of the asset, which can be explored via our intuitive model viewing platform. Our system has been developed with the aim of transforming how end-users are able to make data-driven decisions for any underwater asset.

We will have the data to build an AI platform, that through machine learning, can automate the process of reviewing the surveying a quay or hull. Companies providing different data-based vessel monitoring platforms (hull-monitoring, fuel efficiency, invasive species) call all benefit from integrating our more complete and denser data into their documentation or data driven services towards their customers. Shipowners will further benefit, as use of our technology will help to reduce uncertainty and hence operation cost, by enabling superior pre-dry-docking data to be made available.

How can Blue Atlas Robotics contribute to a cleaner or safer maritime future?

We will contribute to a more sustainable, safer, and cost-effective shipping industry by providing improvements to the way we can proactively monitor, in snapshots as well as time lapsed, the condition of vessel hulls. Integration of our dense data into a variety of data driven platforms already presented within the maritime industry, will make these even more robust and help ship owners to realize the full value of these digitalized services. One of the core value points from implementing our technology will be the benefits from being able to monitor the entire surface area of the hull with such precise and repeatable data. Our technology will become a valuable monitoring tool in the pursuit of lowering fuel consumption and achieving the long-term goals of a carbon neutral shipping industry, as well providing much improved capabilities when it comes to detecting invasive species anywhere on the hull.

Where is Blue Atlas Robotics in 5 years from now?

In 5 years, Blue Atlas Robotics will have developed a solid market share within the maritime and offshore wind industries, as well as all other surveying segments of structures exposed to the maritime environment. We will have developed different product lines outside the shipping industry, aimed at near shore and offshore markets, taking advantage of the readily scalable core of our technology, as well as expanding our services with other near range underwater sensors to allow for a complete range of measurements and data collection for any scenario. Also, benefiting from our already today established network partners, we have plans to expand and become a product and technology provider also in the key markets in US, Asia and Australia.

How is Blue Atlas Robotics organized, and who are the key people?

Carl Chatfield, Founder of Blue Atlas Robotics in 2018: For more than the past 10 years Carl has worked with software development within the area of Robotics, Computer Vision and Automation which are the 3 core elements of Blue Atlas Robotics technology.

Oleksandr Slovak, Senior Software Engineer for Blue Atlas Robotics from July 2019: Master of Science with Major in Algorithms and Control System for Electro-Mechanical System. Core elements in Blue Atlas Robotics autonomous navigational control system.

Mads Andersen, CEO, from September 2020: Entered Blue Atlas Robotics in September 2020, with a long career with service providers within the offshore and maritime sectors from 2001-2020.

Esben Østergaard, ReInvest Robotics, main investor, track record from Universal Robots and MIR Robots.

Competition is still running

Are you interested in participating in EUROPORT 2021 in Rotterdam, where you can show your products to a larger relevant audience for a budget friendly fee? Then get aboard!

Concept: The Rising Stars Pavilion is developed as a competition concept and applications are open to all maritime start-up companies, not older than 5 years.

Applications: Are welcome. We only have 12 packages available. These applications will be carefully reviewed by a committee of selected maritime business experts and the chosen companies will be informed when reviewed.

Evaluation criteria: Companies will be evaluated based on 4 criteria:

• Growth potential
• Innovation
• Ambitions
• Team

Package includes: Participation in the Start-up Pavilion with own exhibition stand and access to shared café and bar.

1 maritime promotion business package; consisting of:

• 1 month, 1 Side Banner 300w X 250h pixel in the right side of maritime-professionals.com
• 1 month banner in weekly MARPRO newsletter
• 1 company profile on maritime-professionals.com
• 1 article on maritime-professionals.com with a link to your website
• Featured post on Maritime Professionals and Maritime Deck Officers LinkedIn groups (+70,000 members)
• Article included in weekly broadcast of MARPRO News 

Price for participation: 1.995 EUR

For more information, please contact MARPRO through info@marpro.dk