Page 30: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Jul/Aug 2021)

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FEATURE ROBOTICS

TotalEnergies

Total took a Taurob Inspector on a one-week trial on a platform offshore the Netherlands.

Following onshore testing at the Institut Teknologi Petro- $75,000, and has been used for social distancing in Singapore leum Petronas (Instep)’s Upstream Downstream Training and in the U.S. by state police, says Fallon. “A primary use

Plant in Malaysia, Petronas took its ANYmal C offshore for case is probably in industrial inspection,” says Fallon, such three weeks testing on a hydrocarbon free platform as the robot as offshore, remote or nuclear facilities, that otherwise mean is IP67 rated (water and dust-proof), but not EX-rated. “We putting someone in harm’s way. made use of the sensors onboard to perform a general visual But there’s also still more work to do for the offshore indus- inspection and read analogue and digital gauges, do thermal try, in addition to developing ATEX batteries and manipula- imaging and record audio emitting from a pump and battery tion capabilities. For Petronas, the next steps are further pilots recharging,” he said. The platform was also mapped over four at a fabrication yard, a regasifcation terminal and CPP with foors, with navigation via pre-programmed way points, in- ANYmal C. But from 2022, it wants to then trial ANYmal cluding traveling up 36 narrow steps with a 45-degree incline. CX, which will be an ATEX certifed ANYmal. This year “It was always windy, the wind speed was about 17 knots but Equinor will also take a robot offshore. it didn’t affect the stability of ANYmal. We went up to third Meanwhile, following its Mad Dog trials, bp has said it foor, performed three inspection points and then came down plans to look more into ways robots could ‘see’ things humans again and we tested this a few times and it was a success.” can’t, using multispectral and hyperspectral imaging. “The

Walking up stairs is no mean feat. To get here, the offshore idea is there for a robot to be able to see things a human eye industry is leveraging decades of work, not least by the likes of can’t see, such as methane emissions,” says Adam Ballard, bp

Boston Dynamics, an MIT spin-out now famous for its videos facilities technology manager. of robots either falling down or, today, performing synchro- As well as solving the battery and manipulation challenges, nized dance routines. It’s now owned by Hyundai (indicating there are other tasks to solve. One challenge is that existing their defnite move into the commercial realm). Balance for infrastructure hasn’t been built with robots in mind. Build- a quadruped means having to continuously send commands ing environments that are prepared for robots would make maybe 400 times a second, based on an array of sensors con- some of their life easier, especially for maintenance tasks. That stantly telling the software to adapt, says Maurice Fallon, As- includes having reliable communications infrastructure, en- sociate Professor in Engineering Science, at Oxford Robotics abling connectivity with the robot and the human in the loop

Institute. A lot of actions are now highly simulated before be- supervision or control that will be essentially initially. While ing put into action on a robot, taking into account forces that the robots have computing on board, access to the cloud and will be involved and the algorithm design. Some of the sensors cloud applications is an important topic, says Biegl. “If we’re robots used have also advanced, such as depth cameras. Eight operating 200 km offshore, we need low latency to make it years ago, robots relied on stereo cameras. Now they have 4-5 work,” says Bell, “especially while the autonomy is being built depth cameras to help them understand their environment, as – and it’s not quite there yet, he says. well as torque-based balance algorithms and decision making “I think the building blocks are there,” adds Bell. “A lot of – whether to step on a certain terrain or not. companies are out there developing solutions that need to be

Boston Dynamic’s Spot is commercially available for used in anger. But there’s no real testing center, so it’s diffcult 30 OFFSHORE ENGINEER OEDIGITAL.COM