Innovations and developments in Inspection & Maintenance Robotics
Aksel A. Transeth, SINTEF, Ferdinando Cannella, IIT, Evangelos Boukas, DTU, Mehdi Boukallel, CEA List, Malcolm Mielle, Schindler AG,Room 11-13
Questions to be answered
The workshop will be focused on two main questions
- What are the latest advancements and future trends in inspection and maintenance (I&M) robotics, including AI integration, digital twins, and human-robot collaboration?
- How can robotic systems provide value and be effectively scaled and implemented in real-world maintenance scenarios, particularly for hard-to-reach areas and large-scale infrastructures?
Description
Robot manipulators and unmanned vehicles continue to make their way into more and more applications within inspection and maintenance (I&M), and in combination with AI and data, they provide value to the industry and public sector in a variety of sectors. There are lots of potential use cases for I&M robotics, but to bring the industry and research forward we need to identify further what are the use cases with high-value, and what latest results from the technology development and research can meet the needs of these use cases, and other future use cases. These are the topics of this ERF2025 workshop. The topics will be addressed through a series of short presentations by key stakeholders, followed by an engaging plenary discussion.
Organisation of the WS
The workshop will be divided into two parts
1) (ca. 50 min) Short, 7-8-minute, presentations / statements addressing the key questions of the workshop and highlighting insights from real use cases and relevant technologies.
2) (ca. 30 min) Active plenary discussions among all workshop participants (speakers and attendees). In parallel, we use online tools such as Slido or Google Drive to gather inputs on the key questions for the workshop.
Intended outcome
We target the following main outcomes for end-users, suppliers and researchers attending the workshop:
- Insights into the latest advancements and future trends in inspection and maintenance (I&M) robotics, including AI integration, digital twins, and human-robot collaboration.
- Insights into how robotic systems provide value and be effectively scaled and implemented in real-world maintenance scenarios, particularly for hard-to-reach areas and large-scale infrastructures.
We will produce a summary of the workshop and share presentations in the cases possible. The inputs from the workshop could be used as inputs to other documents, e.g., strategy work in ADRA and euRobotics, and efforts in other organizations and networks.
Further information
The list of topics and speakers is currently:
- Offshore wind and I&M robotics. Andry Maykol Pinto, Inesctec.
- UGVs for I&M of industrial facilities. Lukas Silberbauer, Taurob.
- Autonomous robotics through embodied AI. Kostas Alexis and Mihir R. Dharmadhikari, NTNU.
- Autonomous aerial inspection of GNSS-denied and confined maritime assets. Evangelos Boukas, DTU.
- Robotics for data collection and maintenance. Mirko Kovac, Imperial College London (Aerial Robotics Laboratory) and EMPA/EPFL (Laboratory of Sustainability Robotics).
- AI-driven context understanding and action enhancement for Robotics. Selen Pehlivan Tort, VTT.
- A Novel Remote Visual Inspection System for Predictive Maintenance, Adriano Mancini, Polytechnic University of the Marches, Italy
The list may be subject to change.
Organisers
The workshop program is organized by the euRobotics topic group (TG) on I&M in collaboration with the RIMA Alliance euRobotics innovation network (https://rima-network.eu-robotics.net/) and the AI, Data and Robotics Association (Adra) topic group on I&M.