WS#35 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

iCal

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

14:00 - 14:50 Short, 6-minute presentations / statements addressing the key questions of the workshop and highlighting insights from real use cases and relevant technologies:
Offshore wind and I&M robotics (Andry Maykol Pinto - Inesctec, Portugal)
Using ground robots to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Lukas Silberbauer - Taurob, Austria)
Autonomous robotics through embodied AI (Kostas Alexis - NTNU, Norway; Mihir R. Dharmadhikari - NTNU, Norway)
Autonomous aerial inspection of GNSS-denied and confined maritime assets (Evangelos Boukas DTU, Denmark)
Robotics for data collection and maintenance (Mirko Kovac - Aerial Robotics Laboratory, Imperial College London & Laboratory of Sustainability Robotics, EMPA/EPFL, Norway)
AI-driven context understanding and action enhancement for Robotics (Selen Pehlivan Tort - VTT, Finland)
A Novel Remote Visual Inspection System for Predictive Maintenance (Adriano Mancini - Polytechnic University of the Marches, Italy)
Employee Centric Change Management - The Key to Future Proof Automated Inspections with Robotics (Benjamin Mottis - ANYbotics, Switzerland)
14:50 - 15:20 Active plenary discussions among all workshop participants (speakers and attendees)

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.

Speakers, Panelists, etc

Andry Maykol Pinto - Inesctec, Portugal
Lukas Silberbauer - Taurob, Austria
Kostas Alexis - NTNU, Norway
Mihir R. Dharmadhikari - NTNU, Norway
Evangelos Boukas - DTU, Denmark
Mirko Kovac - Aerial Robotics Laboratory, Imperial College London & Laboratory of Sustainability Robotics, EMPA/EPFL, Switzerland
Selen Pehlivan Tort - VTT, Finland
Adriano Mancini - Polytechnic University of the Marches, Italy
Benjamin Mottis - ANYbotics, Switzerland

Topic Groups and/or Innovation networks involved

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.