Mobile robots for offshore inspection and manipulation

— This paper analyzes the potential to apply mobile service robots in offshore oil and gas producing environments. The required hardware and software components and abilities of such a mobile offshore inspection and manipulation robot are presented in this paper. Possible applications of mobile service robots in an offshore environment range from simple visual inspection tasks to physical intervention with the process equipment, e.g. for sample taking, valve turning, cleaning up minor obstructions, and operating control panels. The first prototype of a mobile offshore inspection robot is equipped with a robotic arm which carries a camera for visual inspection as well as various application sensors such as a microphone, gas and fire sensors. It is able of both, remote and autonomous inspection of industrial process equipment. In automatic mode the robot autonomously executes preprogrammed inspection tasks. The results of all inspection tasks are saved to a database and can be reviewed...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: IROS
• Authors: Matthias Bengel, Kai Pfeiffer, Birgit Graf, Alexander Bubeck, Alexander Verl
• Keywords: Inspection, IROS 2009, Offshore Environments, Robot, Robotics