Current European refineries and civil infrastructures, like tunnels and bridges, are ageing, and therefore gradually become deteriorated, especially taking into consideration the current and future economic situation in Europe where large investments in renewing infrastructures are not foreseen. Then, it is paramount important to increase the efficiency and quality of inspection and maintenance activities in order to keep the necessary safety levels in these ageing infrastructures. To overcome this important challenge, PILOTING proposes the adaptation, integration, and demonstration of robotic solutions, in an integrated platform, which will be tested and evaluated in three large-scale pilots: refineries (Oil&Gas sector), bridges/viaducts and tunnels (Civil/Transport Infrastructure sector) with the involvement of all the actors that conform the full value chain. The developed platform will: demonstrate the application of robotics at scale in the domain of Inspection and Maintenance (I&M), reduce end-user commercial risks on the deployment of robotics in the sector, demonstrate capabilities and improve understanding of robotics uptake value, develop and support the related ecosystem around the piloting I&M operations, as well as, contribute to industrial standards in robotics for I&M. To achieve the above, PILOTING will develop an advanced robotic-based platform that will be deployed in the three industrial scenarios and demonstrate the real value towards the inspection and maintenance community as well as its high level socio-economic impact when applied at scale. PILOTING will establish large-scale pilots in real industrial environments to directly reply to main I&M challenges through the demonstration of: increasing rate of inspection and maintenance tasks, improving coverage and performance, decreasing costs and time of operations, improving inspection quality and increasing safety of operators.
