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arc Dassler has hundreds of pictures of people making goofy faces at the camer- as on patrolling robots. It’s a good sign, he says, people are getting used to hav- ing them around.

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Dassler is CEO of Energy Robotics, a producer of hardware-agnostic robotics software. Looking to the fu- ture, he says: “We have a couple of offshore deployments, and we see a positive trend, but we need to frst build trust in the technology. People need to get used to having robots around and see they’re doing a great job. Then we can talk about them activating levers and pressing but- tons. Technically it’s possible, but the change manage- ment needs to come frst.”

Energy Robotics has built a software platform for op- erating all available oil and gas ATEX certifed robots, in- cluding those of ExRobotics, Taurob, Mitsubishi Heavy

Industries and others. It is used for planning, executing and monitoring fully autonomous operator rounds and inspection tasks with robots and drones. All data collected by the robots is integrated into one digital twin. Operators don’t have to worry about data silos created by different robots when they have one world view, says Dassler.

Robots are getting very good at understanding the en- vironment around them. “You can already talk to them using ChatGPT-style large language models and say: ‘Look at all the pumps and motors and pipes. Do that three times a day and report back when something is wrong.’”

Now Energy Robotics is boosting human perceptions. “We have a lot of deployments in refneries where we have robots multiple times a day doing operator rounds and in- specting the equipment, and the data is completely inte- grated back into the asset management system or digital twin of the customer. But robots see the world different.

They operate in point clouds – LIDAR scans of the en- vironment. Not easy for humans to navigate and under- stand. That’s why we have created our Evergreen digital twin. It allows us to take all the data that we have gener- ated and create a very immersive environment which looks like a 3D computer game.”

With the Evergreen Digital Twin, the operator has an up-to-date representation of their offshore plant. “This was a revelation because we created it for the humans to operate robots safer, plan inspection mission and moni- tor the robots. And then the customers saw it and came up for another idea. They now have remote eyes and ears out there and can use the robot to provide a live feed of its environment. This is great for pre-planning maintenance,

Images courtesy Taurob

JULY/AUGUST 2025 OFFSHORE ENGINEER 27