Reynolds Wrap Up: Have You Begun to Apply Robotics/Drones for Inspection Purposes?

Introduction

In December 2020, I had the pleasure of virtually attending ASME’s Robotics for Inspection & Maintenance Summit. I also attended the previous robotics event in September 2019, which was held in person at College Station, Texas before the pandemic set in. I was pleased to see the numerous specialized applications for robotic and drone-type inspection and maintenance. This is sometimes referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), which are becoming increasingly available to us for fixed equipment mechanical integrity (FEMI) applications. Although, some aspects of the presentations during the event were about emerging technologies not yet available commercially.

During the conference, I had the opportunity to watch several videos from Boston Dynamics of their dog- and human-like robots (named Spot and Atlas) that were able to do some amazing things. I was surprised how far along they had come from the more primitive robots. If you haven’t seen those videos, search “Boston Dynamics robotics” on YouTube. It’s fascinating viewing.^[1]

Some inspection robots are controlled by a human nearby with a controller and joystick while others can be programmed to go into a situation and carry out a task without a human controller (i.e., autonomous robotics/UAVs).

Clearly, the robotics inspection industry is still in the early phases of gaining traction and developing applications that will benefit our industry; however, it does appear to me that they will find some niche applications that will make them competitive with human inspectors.

Our lack of understanding of what robotics can and cannot do is often matched by the service provider’s lack of familiarity with our needs and job sites, so a lot of discussions are usually necessary before a contract is signed. If you have a complex, difficult job in mind for robotic inspection, before you launch into it, you may want to begin with something simple just to gain some experience with the service provider and their tools. If you are one of the first to engage a robotics job at your site (or within your company), you may want to keep a good record of how well the job went (including cost comparisons with human-based inspections) relative to your expectations and contractual agreement that you can share with others that may want to try robotics inspection.

In this Reynolds Wrap Up, I will briefly summarize some of my takeaways from the two-day conference, including:

• Interesting applications
• Challenges that robotic inspection suppliers still face
• Pros and cons of robotic and UAV inspection
• Questions you may want to explore before you sign a contract to apply robotic inspections

Some Interesting Applications