Welcome to the Topic Group Inspection and Maintenance
Inspection & Maintenance (I&M) robotics encompasses a large variety of different robots, including uncrewed vehicles for operations under water, on water, on land, in the air and in space within several market domains. These domains include, but are not limited to, water and waste, transportation, energy generation and distribution (renewables, nuclear, oil and gas, etc.), processing industry, aquaculture, maritime, and buildings and infrastructure. Robotics for I&M in some applications in these domains are starting to become common practice, while slowly getting there in other applications. The value propositions of I&M robotics include to improve Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) aspects, increase uptime of industry and public sector assets and reduce costs in operations. The topic of I&M robotics requires expertise on end user applications, robotics technologies such as mechatronics, sensing, perception, localization, planning, control, energy and communication. Integration of robotics with data and/or AI technologies for, e.g., automated analysis of inspection data can be a main enabler for value creation.
The goal and scope of the I&M robotics topic group is to influence and drive the research, development and operative deployment of robotics in I&M. We do so by organizing workshops to connect stakeholders and discuss challenges, success stories and next steps between domains and throughout value chains. Moreover, we coordinate input from the I&M robotics community in Europe to highlight needs, possibilities and challenges regarding I&M robotics. We structure and summarize the input in major themes, use cases and challenges in I&M robotics. This is then shared with the topic group, and, e.g., used to support euRobotics and ADRA roadmapping processes.
Some of the cross-use case challenges identified so far include to achieve more sustainable deployments of I&M robotics; Standards, verification and validation; Robustness and reliability; as well as integration of I&M robotics into systems and operations. All relevant information is available through the topic group’s wiki accessible for all topic group members including, e.g., end-users/infrastructure owners, technology/service providers, universities and research organizations.