Small ships and dragon boats commonly encounter corrosion triggered by biofouling, higher hydrodynamic drag, high expenses, and safety risks in manual cleaning. Traditional cleaning tools using magnetic attraction or vacuum cups have intrinsic drawbacks like unsuitability for certain materials and loss of adsorption on curved surfaces. To tackle these problems, this paper develops an underwater cleaning robot with modular structure and negative-pressure adsorption based on Bernoulli’s principle. The robot uses one ROV thruster as the key component for negative pressure production, combined with a flexible sealing part to realize reliable attachment to non-magnetic hulls. It also features a modular roller-type cleaning head and 4WD chassis, which can fit the curved bottom surfaces of dragon boats and hulls of various materials. Through careful material choice and structural layout, the whole robot weighs less than 5 kg, striking a balance between light weight and working stability. Tests show that the robot can travel stably on curved hull surfaces with curvature radius no less than 50 cm. It removes 92.3% of mixed weeds and algae, and over 81.7% of hard shellfish attachments. The battery life lasts up to 1 hour, bringing practical benefits including underwater operation without hauling, low operating cost, and no damage to the hull. Subsequent improvements will center on adaptability to dynamic water flows, longer battery life, and upgrading to lighter materials, so as to support wide application of the device in cleaning small water vessels such as inland lake boats, pleasure yachts and dragon boats.

Yuchen Zhai. Design of a Modular Negative-Pressure Adsorption Robot for Dragon Boat Cleaning Using Bernoulli's Principle. Academic Journal of Engineering and Technology Science (2026), Vol. 9, Issue 3: 71-76. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJETS.2026.090310.

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