Bathyscaphic Robotic Floor Thickness Monitoring of Hazardous Liquid Storage Tanks (NautilUS)

根据美国石油协会（API）行业标准的要求，对石油化工储罐进行定期检查，特别是对储罐底板进行腐蚀稀释，NautilUS深海机器人将降低检查所涉及的成本、危险以及环境、健康和安全风险。同时，由于机器人NautilUS平台独特的运动特性，将克服现有机器人解决方案的不足。该项目的产出将产生一种产品，通过在商业化后的五年内创造价值1700万英镑的营业额，增加英国三家中小企业（监测有限公司、InnotecUK有限公司和诊断声呐有限公司）的营业额和盈利能力。通过开发低功率防爆机器人设计、开发罐内机器人本地化以及超声波硬件和软件开发，可以实现消除目前需要将待检查的储罐从服务中移除的总体目标，这些将集成到一个产品中，以提供一个具有成本效益的、持续部署的统计检查解决方案。

The NautilUS bathyscaphic robot will reduce the costs, danger and environmental and health and safety risks involved in inspections required by the American Petroleum Institute (API) industry standard for petrochemical storage tank periodic inspections and in particular for corrosion thinning of the tank floor. At the same time, the shortcomings of existing robotic solutions will be overcome due to unique motion characteristics of the robotic NautilUS platform. The output of the project will lead to a product that will increase the turnover and profitability of the 3 UK SMEs - Monition Ltd, InnotecUK Ltd and Diagnostic Sonar Ltd (DSL) through the creation of an opportunity worth £17M in turnover over the five years following commercialisation. The overall objective of negating the current need for removing the tank to be inspected from service will be achieved through developments in low power explosion-proof robot design, the development of in-tank robot localisation and ultrasonics hardware and software developments, which will be integrated into a product to provide a cost-effective, continuously deployed statistical inspection solution.