The Importance Of Diagnostic And Inspection Robots In Automation
Seventy percent of robots in the United States are worked in just four industries: auto-making, electronics, plastic and chemicals, and metals manufacturing.
Inspection and diagnosing play an important part in all above-mentioned industries, so a various robots have been programmed to inspect equipment and diagnose problems when they arise.
Probably, inspection and diagnosis are not limited to manufacturing. AI diagnostics and inspection are helping human more than we can imagine.
Wind Turbines Diagnostics
Possessing special features of a beetle with six legs, stability and dexterity, BladeBUG is one of the newest and coolest robots. So, what is its purpose? The answer is to inspect and repair off-shore wind turbines.
The BladeBUG is designed to navigate curved blades of turbones deftly.
Equipped with a variety of sensors, the BladeBUG can detect whether the blades are attached properly or not. If not, the robot will be able to reattach and repair the blade, if needed.
However, that is the result of testing. Pilot testing began in March, so there’s still a long way to improve and finish.
When finished, BladeBUGs will be able to do dangerous things for human technicians safely, efficiently and flexible. According to estimation, off-shore wind turbines average 300 feet in height.
Pipelines and Hazardous Spaces Diagnostics
To inspect tight spaces where is not easy for human to acccess, they use robots to perform inspection and diagnosis. These spaces is not to ensure safety or even strongly dangerous for human to penetrate into.
For example, borescope are robots designed to assist visual inspection of confined, difficult-to-reach sapces. They can go through pipes that supply oil, gas, and miscellaneous chemicals. These materials are essential for civilization but harmful for humans if handled in a narrow space.
Borescopes help to detect faults in the piping or confined sapce safely and accurately. Then, people no longer have to do hazardous tasks such as getting inside to inspect and diagnose. They can also detect faults in turbines, military equipment, car engines, generators, and even aircrafts that are operating outside of Earth’s atmosphere.
These robots can also discover mistakes in turbines, military equipment, car engines, generators, and even aircrafts that are operating outside of Earth’s atmosphere.
When doing dangerous work, these robots are sometimes provided with Kevlar and other water and acid-resistant material.
Medical Diagnostics
Without doubt, in health sector, robots have taken over these duties such as inspection and diagnosis – considered the most important and suitable in the field of medicine.
In a 2019 study, medical data from 600,000 patients were taken into an AI program, which diagnosed them as accurately – sometimes more so – as human doctors. The AI diagnosed asthma 90% propetly compared to 80-94% of doctors; gastrointestinal disease was exactly diagnosed by the robot 87% of the time, whereas doctors landed 82-90%.
Moreover, these “robotics doctors” with robotic probes, similar to borescopes mentioned, have been developed to inspect and repair human tissue.
With the complicated situation of the COVID-19 pandemic happening at this time, one of the most imperative is to discover true positive patients as soon as possible. To help this, scientists at Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute of the University of Californiax, created a robotic lab that will be able to perfrom from 1,000 to 3,000 COVID-19 tests daily.
While predominantly used in the manufacturing sector, robots are evaluated more and more impotant and have broadened in other industries.
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