The Offshore Robotics for the Certification of Assets (ORCA) Hub has secured an additional £2.5m of funding, to develop robots which make offshore infrastructure inspection and repair safer.
With added investment from UK Research & Innovation, the ORCA Hub will continue to work with industry partners to help the offshore energy industry to use robots to inspect, maintain and repair platforms, wind turbines, and other infrastructure, guided by human experts on ships or back on shore.
Some £600,000 of the new funding will be used to help deliver six demonstration projects with industrial partners, including the inspection of wind turbine foundations and the deployment of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors.
The remaining £1.9m will fund an extension of ORCA Hub’s activities to see if technologies and processes developed by the Hub can be used in other sectors, ranging from construction and urban infrastructure through to decommissioning and waste management.
Yvan Petillot, professor of robotics and autonomous systems at Heriot-Watt University and co-academic lead of the National Robotarium, has been appointed as the ORCA Hub’s new director.
He takes over from Professor David Lane, founding director of the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, who will continue to support the Hub as an advisor to its independent steering committee.
Petillot said: “Robots have the potential to carry out inspection and maintenance in hazardous environments, reducing the risks of putting divers into the water in harsh conditions or workers operating at height on wind turbines. Finding ways to combine the flexibility of autonomous robots with remote human operators has been one of the key strands in my career over the past 20 years.
“The international offshore energy industry is undergoing a revolution, adopting aggressive net-zero objectives, and shifting rapidly towards large scale offshore wind energy production.
“The long-term industry vision is for a digitised offshore energy field, operated, inspected and maintained from the shore using robots, digital architectures and cloud-based processes to realise this vision. However, the recent pandemic has highlighted a widespread need for remote operations in many other industrial sectors.”
Founded in 2017 and led by Heriot-Watt and the University of Edinburgh, the ORCA Hub also includes Imperial College London, Liverpool and Oxford Universities. It is working to support energy transition and the growth of renewable energy. It is one of the strategic projects within the National Robotarium.
Read more: Robot-human communication simplified by new ORCA solution
