Members from the European Comission reviewed the current progress of AEROARMS-Project in Seville.
“The future of inspection lies in digitalisation and robotics,” says project leader Tobias Nelke, TÜV NORD Systems. Together with Dr Dalibor Jerinic, also from TÜV NORD Systems, he attended the recent review meeting of the European Commission in Seville, Spain, to evaluate current progress in the growth of the Horizon 2020 project known as “AEROARMS”. The innovative developments have thus far involved multi-sensor map-making, interactions with other robots and pipe thickness measurements.
The drone developed during the project can avoid obstacles, measure the thickness of pipes, use sensors to make some maps and interact with other kinds of robot, such as crawlers. These innovations could save many thousands of euros and reduce the risk of accidents at work in the course of industrial inspections.
Earlier this year, engineers from TÜV NORD Systems, TÜV NORD EnSys and TÜV NORD CERT joined forces with other project partners to perform the first outdoor experiments. The AEROX system developed by FADA-CATEC flew up to an elevated pipe and carried out some contact inspections. The system also measures the thickness of the walls of a pipe. The quality of the inspections was evaluated by TÜV NORD experts.
The project has a budget of 5.7 million euros and is a collaboration with the University of Seville (GRVC), FADA-CATEC and the Technical University of Barcelona. Also involved are entities from Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland such as LARS CNNR, Consortium CREATE, and enterprises as TÜV NORD, Elektra UAS, Sensima and General Inspection Robotics. The AEROARMS project will come to an end in 2019 and was awarded the Innovation Radar Prize by Euronews in 2017.
Watch the Video to find out more about the developments of the project: https://youtu.be/-ZXWwKUoN4o