Novel Aerial Manipulator for Accurate and Robust Industrial NDT Contact Inspection: A New Tool for the Oil and Gas Inspection Industry

Abstract

There is a strong demand in the oil and gas industry to develop alternatives to manual inspection. This paper presents AeroX, a novel aerial robotic manipulator that provides physical contact inspection with unprecedented capabilities. AeroX has a semi-autonomous operation, which provides interesting advantages in contact inspection. In the free-flight mode, the pilot guides the robot until performing contact with its end-effector on the surface to be inspected. During contact, AeroX is in its fully-autonomous global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-free contact–flight mode, in which the robot keeps its relative position w.r.t. the surface contact point using only its internal sensors. During autonomous flight, the inspector can move—with uninterrupted contact—the end-effector on the surface for accurately selecting the points where to perform A-scan measurements or continuous B-scan or C-scan inspections. AeroX adopts an eight-tilted rotor configuration and a simple and efficient design, which provides high stability, maneuverability, and robustness to rotor failure. It can perform contact inspection on surfaces at any orientation, including vertical, inclined, horizontal-top or horizontal-bottom, and its operation can be easily integrated into current maintenance operations in many industries. It has been extensively validated in outdoor experiments including a refinery and has been awarded the EU Innovation Radar Prize 2017.

Winged Aerial Manipulation Robot with Dual Arm and Tail

“…The solution of Equation (8) for the parameters given in Table 5 is α = AoA = 10.46 • , δ = q tail = 11.97 • . The parameters of the table were obtained for the prototype described in Section 2.3, assuming that the robot is gliding at a 10 m/s speed, as in the CFD analysis.…”

“…Winged aerial manipulation robots (WAMR) represent the evolution of aerial manipulators based on multirotor platforms [1][2][3][4][5], proposing the integration of lightweight robotic arms in fixed or flapping wing aircrafts [6,7] in order to increase the range and endurance of inspection and maintenance operations in remote areas or large scenarios such as refineries [8,9], solar plants, power lines [10], or wind turbines [11]. Vertical take-off and landing platforms like multirotors or helicopters have been extensively used in aerial manipulation due to their high maneuverability and ability to operate in hovering conditions [12,13].…”

Aerial Manipulator With Rolling Base for Inspection of Pipe Arrays

“…The application of aerial manipulation robots to inspection and maintenance operations [1] in industrial scenarios like oil and gas refineries [2] [3], wind turbines [4], or bridges [5] [6] is motivated by the convenience to reduce the required time and cost with respect to conventional solutions carried out nowadays by human operators deployed on cranes and other infrastructures. The ability of multirotors [7] [8] and autonomous helicopters [9][10] to reach quickly and easily high altitude workspaces [11] [12] [13] can be useful in the installation [14] [15] and retrieval [14] [16] of sensors devices in polluted areas, transportation operations [17], inspection by contact [18] [19], crack repair [20], valve turning [21] and other torsional manipulation tasks [22], or in those tasks requiring the use of tools [23].…”

“…In this sense, a metric of interest to be maximized is the ratio between the effective operation time in which the robot conducts the task, and the deployment time, that is, the time required to reach the workspace. It is interesting to note that most works in aerial manipulation [2] - [23] assume that the robot operates on flight, without considering the possibility to land or perch. In order to avoid the waste of energy, some perching mechanisms have been proposed [24], allowing the realization of manipulation tasks while suspending from cables or poles [25].…”

Aerodynamic Effects in Multirotors Flying Close to Obstacles: Modelling and Mapping

“…Although in most of these applications the UAV accomplish perceptive tasks such as exploration, monitoring or surveillance among others, there are some of them that directly involve interaction between the UAV and the environment and which are mainly carried out by aerial manipulators [2][3] [4]. These are a new concept of UAV with an integrated robotic manipulator which are used in tasks as contact inspection and sensor installation in inspection and maintenance (I&M) of infrastructures or industrial plants [5] [6]. These I&M tasks usually require that the aerial platform flies very close to different obstacles, for instance, the AEROARMS [7] and HYFLIERS [8] project are focused on aerial manipulation for outdoors applications in I&M in oil and gas plants or the RESIST [9] project which is about the I&M of large civil infrastructures as bridges or tunnels using UAV.…”