MAINBOT - Mobile robots for inspection and maintenance in extensive industrial plants

MAINBOT project is developing service robots applications to autonomously execute inspection tasks in extensive industrial plants in equipment that is arranged horizontally (using ground robots) or vertically (climbing robots). MAINBOT aims at using already available robotic solutions to deploy innovative systems in order to fulfill project industrial objectives: to provide a means to help measuring several physical parameters in multiple points by autonomous robots, able to navigate and climb structures, handling sensors or special non destructive testing equipment. MAINBOT will validate the proposed solutions in two solar plants (cylindrical-parabolic collectors and central tower), that are very demanding from mobile manipulation point of view mainly due to the extension (e.g. a thermal solar plant of 50Mw, seven hours of storage, with 400 hectares, 400.000 mirrors, 180 km of absorber tubes, 140m tower height), the variability of conditions (outdoor, day-night), safet y requirements, etc. The objective is to increase the efficiency of the installation by improving the inspection procedures and technologies. Robot capabilities are developed at different levels: (1) Simulation: realistic testing environments are created in order to validate the algorithms developed for the project using available robot, sensors and application environments. (2) Autonomous navigation: Hybrid (topological-metric) localization and planning algorithms are integrated in order to manage the huge extensions. (3) Manipulation: Robot arm movement planning and control algorithms are developed for positioning sensing equipment with accuracy and collision avoidance. (4) Interoperability: Mechanisms to integrate the heterogeneous systems taking part in the robot operation, from third party inspection equipments to the end user maintenance planning. (5) Non-Destructive Inspection: based on eddy current and thermography, detection algorithms are developed in order to provide automatic inspectio

Non-destructive inspection in industrial equipment using robotic mobile manipulation

MAINBOT project has developed service robots based applications to autonomously execute inspection tasks in extensive industrial plants in equipment that is arranged horizontally (using ground robots) or vertically (climbing robots). The industrial objective has been to provide a means to help measuring several physical parameters in multiple points by autonomous robots, able to navigate and climb structures, handling non-destructive testing sensors. MAINBOT has validated the solutions in two solar thermal plants (cylindrical-parabolic collectors and central tower), that are very demanding from mobile manipulation point of view mainly due to the extension (e.g. a thermal solar plant of 50Mw, with 400 hectares, 400.000 mirrors, 180 km of absorber tubes, 140m height tower), the variability of conditions (outdoor, day-night), safety requirements, etc. Once the technology was validated in simulation, the system was deployed in real setups and different validation tests carried out. In this paper two of the achievements related with the ground mobile inspection system are presented: (1) Autonomous navigation localization and planning algorithms to manage navigation in huge extensions and (2) Non-Destructive Inspection operations: thermography based detection algorithms to provide automatic inspection abilities to the robots