AI Bibliography

Avestec has successfully developed proprietary contact-based flying robots (SKYRON™) for ultrasonic (UT) A scan measurement of metallic surfaces. The technology has been successfully validated with many asset owners in onshore and offshore industrial campaigns.

Although the flying contact-based robot can easily access most asset surfaces to perform inspections, it has some limitations when it comes to challenging and dense spaces. Such shortcoming is exasperated specially for pipe inspection in offshore environments. Pipes are usually located in the vicinity of one another or in close proximity to walls or other structures, which makes it practically impossible for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to reach to every side of the pipe and carry out circumferential (3/6/9/12) measurement as needed.

In order to enhance the advantages of contact-based aerial robots and overcome the aforementioned limitations, a marsupial robotic methodology has been followed by means of combining the proprietary contact-based UAV and a custom omni-directional mini crawler in a collaborative robotics fashion. An advanced marsupial connection between the two robots both in terms of mechanical (e.g., carrier/passenger roles) and control mechanism (e.g. master/slave roles) and versatility of the task deliveries can potentially introduce a lot of advantages over a single flying robot for asset inspection.

In addition, Phased Array Ultrasonic (PAUT) sensory package has been integrated into the marsupial robot to expand NDT capabilities for inspection including thickness measurements, corrosion mapping, defect detection (e.g. such as cracks, voids, and pits caused by corrosion), weld inspection and many more.