The recent SPRINT Robotics Fitness Challenge gave us a chance to test the latest and greatest robotics tech out there. It’s fair to say that each and every partner brought a champion solution that could find itself in the very real world of asset inspection in the next few years, and that gets us excited.
At the end of May, there was a two-day Robotics Fitness Challenge organized by SPRINT Robotics, where Falcker and twelve other member companies brought the very best robots on the market to show their capabilities in a series of real-world challenges to determine how good they were at asset inspection. The best thing to come out of the event was the knowledge that this tech is helping to elevate the industry as a whole, and that’s a big deal.
All Shapes and Sizes
The whole focus of the event was on accelerating technology to support maintenance and inspection processes. There were a number of players in the industry supporting the competition because we all know that this type of technology testing is crucial for asset management in the future.
Held in the RDM campus in Rotterdam, the innovative nature of the setting was well-matched by all who attended the event. There’s a great write-up by Wiebe de Jager from Dronewatch.nl on the details of the competition itself that you should check out, but we had robots that could fly, walk, crawl, on their own or with the help of an operator – basically, they could do it all.
The teams were given different data-gathering situations that they had to tackle. Replicating real-world asset environments, the robots had to navigate tanks, pipelines, confined spaces, and flare stacks. It was a tricky series of tests, but all the teams performed well.
We even got a chance to show off Percepto’s Dronebox System, where certain flare stacks are given a no-fly zone designation and the drone is pre-programmed to take photos of a site around these limitations. Once everything is set up, it just takes the press of a button, the container opens and the drone sets off.
Another partner of note was Performance Rotors, who are based in Singapore. They build all o f their own drone hardware, which is able to take measurements mid-flight. Their goal is to create technology that stops anyone ever having to inspect the internals of oil and gas assets. We’re so excited to see what else they will produce in the future, and we look forward to working with them again.
It’s Exactly What The Industry Needs
Falcker’s CIO, Duco Boer, spoke of the event by saying:
“The era of robotics is really coming to Industry and this challenge again proves developments are moving at lightning speed.
To better predict and schedule maintenance, assets need to be monitored online and 24/7 while they are in service. This requires automated data collection and robotics play a crucial role here.
The Falcker Asset Care platform is hungry for all types of asset condition data and can combine and analyze all this data to provide valuable information and insights for the customer.
And the Falcker platform is really hardware-agnostic. We don’t mind what the robot looks like or how it moves – we just want great data collected safely and efficiently, just like our customers.”
More and more oil and gas customers are looking for end-to-end solutions. The customers want all data collection, analysis, and recommendations managed by one partner and integrated into one platform. The only way to achieve this sort of performance is to tap into the innovative technology that is being developed and showcased at events such as this.
Got great tech that we should know about? Or want to know more about the Falcker Asset Care Platform? Get in touch with us today.
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