Walking Robot for Industrial Inspection – Routine Maintenance and Monitoring at Hannover Messe

The FZI Research Center for Information Technology presented a robotic solution for an industrial inspection scenario at the Hannover Messe in 2023. The presented use case involved a four-legged walking robot reading pressure gauges autonomously. During its patrol, it also detected workplace hazards such as missing fire extinguishers or items in the workspace. The goal was to create innovative robotic solutions for industrial inspection, service, and process monitoring tasks. Inspection and monitoring are daily routine jobs in the process industry. The FZI develops robotic solutions to meet the necessary requirements by combining robust state-of-the-art hardware and software with innovative, modular approaches. The Boston Dynamics robot Spot is an example of an off-the-shelf platform that combines high mobility and robustness. ROS-based software (such as the FZI’s VDB 3D mapping, ros_bt_py Behavior Trees for defining a mission, or the autonomous reading and detection of environmental hazards through AI) is applied. Combining robust industrial systems with state-of-the-art algorithms enables a flexible yet reliable robotic system. It can easily navigate obstacles like stairs, be deployed for changing scenarios within minimal time, and detect specific objects and conditions under varying circumstances. Watch our videos to see for yourself what solutions the FZI comes up with – to solve the key challenges of industrial inspection and process monitoring. In the comments, let us know what you think about our approach to autonomous inspection scenarios!