Patent ID: 6910435

Claim:
A mooring robot for releasably fastening to a vessel, the mooring robot being fixable to a mounting, wherein the mounting is either a fixed or floating dock or a second vessel, the mooring robot comprising: an attractive attachment element for releasable engagement with a surface for making fast the vessel; a three axis translation unit mounted at the mounting and acting on an arm at one end of which the attractive element is fixed, the translation unit providing power-actuated translational movement to the arm to provide the displacement thereby of the attachment element in three dimensions; at least one actuator driving the arm to thereby displace the attachment element in a horizontal plane so as to move the vessel relative to the mounting in both the fore-and-aft and athwartship directions, the actuator being releasable from a driving condition to the arm to allow external forces to displace the vessel and the attachment element relative to the mounting in the horizontal plane from a selected moored position; and resilient means acting on the arm so as to resiliently bias the vessel and the attachment element toward the selected moored position, the resilient means acting in both the fore-and-aft and athwartship directions.