Smart Tooling is a European project for Interreg Flanders-The Netherlands. With this project, several partners are working together to develop robotic technologies to enable inspections on chemical plants. Robotic inspections can replace human inspections. This is safer, decreases inspection costs and potentially leads to higher quality inspection data, because drones can reach places humans can’t.

Safety is extremely important when working on chemical installations. The smallest mistake can have the most extreme consequences, like explosions or the leakage of poisonous substances into the environment. Therefore, this project, supported by Interreg Flanders-The Netherlands, brings together partners with expertise in robotics and (chemical) inspection, including service providers and several middle to small businesses.

Avular’s role in the project was to supply a very safe drone. To do so, we increased the safety of our existing Vertex drone. We developed software to closely monitor parameters in the robot model, when the drone is flying. This information is directly made available to the control software to adjust the flight plan, based on local information. Being this close on the software and the software parameters, increases the reliability of the drone control, and therewith increases the safety of the drone. Additionally, we have increased the wind resistance of the drone, to better adapt it to extreme outdoor conditions.

Our project partner Airobot has developed collision prevention, geo-fencing technologies and a system to plan safe inspection flights. We have installed those systems on our Vertex drone and have integrated it with our improved software. This enables the drone to plan and execute complex inspection missions, while avoiding collisions. Geofencing prevents the drone from leaving the inspection site.

With the creation of a safer drone and the integration with the software from Airobot, Avular’s part of this project is finished.

Subsidy program: Interreg Vlaanderen-Nederland

Partner: Airobot