Hull Cleaning Robot: Divers, Dry Docks and ABB

How the hull cleaning robot followed careening, copper sheathing, divers and dry dock jets, what 2026 pilots show, and where ABB robots could help.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/6/20266 min read

A hull cleaning robot works on one of the oldest problems at sea. Barnacles, weed and slime grow on every ship below the waterline, slow it down, burn extra fuel and carry species from one port to the next. This post follows how crews fought that growth, from careening and copper sheathing to divers with scrubbers and high-pressure water in dry dock. It then looks at the crawler robots now cleaning hulls in port, the 2026 news from Fremantle and the SMM fair in Hamburg, and where ABB industrial robots could help in the shipyard. That last part is a possibility, since ABB does not sell a hull cleaner.

Diver in a yellow helmet in rough water holding a long scrubbing tool against a dark submarine hull
Diver in a yellow helmet in rough water holding a long scrubbing tool against a dark submarine hull

A US Navy diver uses a scrubber to clean the hull of the submarine USS Key West at Pearl Harbor, 2005. Photo: David Rush, U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

How hulls were scraped, sheathed and blasted by hand

Before metal sheathing, the usual fix was careening. Crews ran a ship onto a steep beach at high tide, hauled it over on its side with tackle from the mastheads and scraped the exposed bottom while the tide was out. Hulls were also coated with mixtures of whale oil, rosin, tar and brimstone, covered with thin sacrificial planking. In 1761 the Royal Navy ordered the 32-gun frigate HMS Alarm to have her whole bottom covered in copper after she came back from the West Indies badly eaten by shipworm. Copper sheathing spread through the British fleet, and Spain and the Netherlands followed in 1779 and 1780.

Close view of a wooden ship hull covered in green weathered copper plates with a patch of new copper
Close view of a wooden ship hull covered in green weathered copper plates with a patch of new copper

New copper sheathing on the hull of USS Constitution in dry dock, 2016. Photo: Naval History and Heritage Command via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Steel ships brought the dry dock to the center of the job. The ship floats into a basin, the gates close, the water is pumped out and the hull sits on blocks, ready to be cleaned. Photos taken on Sydney Harbour between the 1890s and the 1920s already show men in a dry dock washing a hull with a water jet fed by a pump on a cart. Later yards used abrasive blasting to take the hull back to bare steel before fresh antifouling paint. For decades many of those paints relied on tributyltin, or TBT, a biocide so toxic to sea life that it was later banned.

Old black and white photo of men in hats spraying a jet of water at a steel hull beside a pump cart
Old black and white photo of men in hats spraying a jet of water at a steel hull beside a pump cart

Cleaning a ship's hull with a water jet in a dry dock on Sydney Harbour, from the Harry Brisbane Williams collection, 1890s to 1920s. Photo: Australian National Maritime Museum via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions)

Between dry dockings, the work moved under water. Navy and commercial divers clean hulls with handheld scrubbers and powered brush carts, working blind along hundreds of meters of steel. The first hull robots came out of that work. In 2009 the US Office of Naval Research tested the Hull BUG, short for Hull Robotic Bio-inspired Underwater Grooming tool, a small wheeled vehicle that held itself to the hull and was meant to groom it regularly, much like a robot vacuum on a floor. The Navy compared it to a robot vacuum: by grooming the hull often, it would remove growth while it was still a thin film.

Small black robot on four grey wheels with a clear domed housing and red cylinder sitting on grass by water
Small black robot on four grey wheels with a clear domed housing and red cylinder sitting on grass by water

The Hull BUG hull grooming robot tested by the US Office of Naval Research, 2009. Photo: U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Crawlers, biosecurity rules and SMM 2026

Biosecurity is now pushing the job toward robots. In 2023 the International Maritime Organization adopted new guidelines on ships' biofouling, and in April 2025 it agreed to develop a legally binding framework. On 30 September 2026 Daily Cargo News reported on Franmarine's three-year pilot of in-water hull cleaning in Fremantle, Western Australia, six months in. Ships are checked for invasive species and coating damage first. A robot cleans the flat surfaces while specialist tools handle niche areas, and all debris is captured, filtered to 10 microns and treated with UV before the water goes back. Hulls are 3D scanned before and after cleaning.

Diver in a helmet and black dry suit with an air tank climbing a ladder beside a grey ship
Diver in a helmet and black dry suit with an air tank climbing a ladder beside a grey ship

A Navy diver climbs onto the pier after routine underwater hull cleaning on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in Norfolk, 2013. Photo: Jeremiah Anthony Millas, U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Shipowners are buying in as well. In August 2026 MSC and Jotun announced Hull Skating Solutions on MSC Daniela, installed at a dry docking in China in June: a special coating plus a crawler robot that inspects and cleans the hull while the ship is in port. In April Neptune Robotics said it would invest US$12 million in a new factory in Singapore for its autonomous hull cleaning robots. At SMM 2026 in Hamburg, RobotPlusPlus showed its HighMate series, magnetic crawlers for cleaning, hydro blasting and coating ships and tanks. Its coating robot attaches with a permanent magnet and, according to the company, paints 300 to 500 square meters an hour.

Two workers on a raised platform spraying water at the flat underside of a large ship hull
Two workers on a raised platform spraying water at the flat underside of a large ship hull

NASSCO workers on a lift use high-pressure water to clean the hull of USS Bonhomme Richard in dry dock, San Diego, 2010. Photo: Joe Kane, U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

ABB does not make hull cleaning robots, and none of the projects above uses ABB hardware. ABB's closest experience is in the shipyard and the paint shop. Its IRB 5500 paint robot is designed to work in the explosive air of a paint booth, and ABB arms such as the IRB 6700 grind and finish heavy steel parts in cells like Teqram's EasyGrinder. Those are the same tasks a dry dock crew does on a hull, only on a smaller and fixed workpiece. Our post on shipyard welding covers how ABB cobots are starting to work in shipbuilding.

White robot arms with thick black hoses hanging over a grey car body in a bright paint line
White robot arms with thick black hoses hanging over a grey car body in a bright paint line

ABB paint robots working on a car body inside a paint booth. Photo: ABB

Where hull cleaning robots go from here

Ports and shipowners seem to be heading toward cleaning more often, in the water, with everything that comes off caught and filtered. If the IMO framework becomes binding, ports will want proof that a robot captured the debris and left the coating intact, so robots will have to log their paths and scan the hull before and after. An arm-based cell in a dry dock would need the same records, and its paths could be planned and checked for reach and collisions in RobotStudio before anyone stands under a hull.

Large white robot arm grinding a round steel plate with sparks flying in a factory cell
Large white robot arm grinding a round steel plate with sparks flying in a factory cell

An ABB IRB 6700 grinding a steel part in Teqram's EasyGrinder cell at Ancofer. Photo: ABB

In the dry dock itself, the next step could be robot arms on lifts or tracks that blast, wash and paint the flat sides of the hull while workers handle the curved bow, stern and propeller. ABB already sells the pieces for that kind of cell in other industries: paint robots, heavy IRB arms and GoFa cobots that can work beside people with SafeMove safety settings. Nobody has published such an ABB hull cell yet, so it remains an idea. Smaller boats point to the household side: yacht and leisure boat owners already pay divers to clean hulls in marinas, and a cheaper version of a port crawler could take over that job.

White collaborative robot arm on a wooden table with small parts in an office workshop
White collaborative robot arm on a wooden table with small parts in an office workshop

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table. Photo: ABB

Cost, safety and skills are still open. A robot and its service contract have to beat the day rate of a dive team, and a crawler has to hold onto a moving hull in currents and darkness, and a lost robot under a ship is a hazard. Every port sets its own rules, so one machine may be allowed in Fremantle and banned elsewhere. Crews also need new skills, such as reading scan data and repairing thrusters and magnets. Shipowners keep paying anyway, because weed and barnacles slow every ship down, whether it is pushed by an old shaft line or by electric pods like ABB's Azipod.

Two large red propulsion pods with silver hubs and blue ABB covers standing on a quay under blue sky
Two large red propulsion pods with silver hubs and blue ABB covers standing on a quay under blue sky

ABB Azipod propulsion units waiting at a Helsinki shipyard. Photo: Petri Krohn / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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