Versor - Automation of indoor industrial inspections

Automation is one of the main focus areas of the industrial sector, as well as a cornerstone in a vision of a fourth industrial revolution, or "Industry 4.0". Particularly the automation of drones for inspection assignments will enable significant savings for industrial firms in terms of cost, time spent, downtime and HSE. These robots can access locations which humans cannot reach or where they cannot stay, all while repeating operations systematically and effectively. Automating drones for the use of indoor applications is especially difficult, as one of the main challenges is for robots to understand precisely where they are in a given environment. Without this crucial information, they are neither able to navigate independently nor complete a mission autonomously. In indoor environments, an added challenge is to attain this environmental understanding without the use of external systems that have to be set-up in advance. To solve this problem, Versor AS is developing a cutting-edge navigation solution for non-stationary robots, which works indoors, and is especially suited for drones; where the problem is most pressing. As all sensors and processing are run exclusively on-board the drone platform, complete awareness of the surrounding environment is achieved without the use of external systems - a prerequisite for truly automated inspection assignments. By removing the need for pilots, entire fleets of drones may be supervised remotely, enabling true scalability of drone operations across various applications. Superior localization also enables the possibility of capturing and storing inspection data in a way that introduces digitalization to presently manual application areas. The purpose of automating drone operations is not simply to automate flight; it is to automate the inspection and data analysis operations in their entirety. Our first target application is within indoor inspections of industrial tanks in the maritime, petroleum and shipping sectors.