Gauges are often used to track important data on an oil rig, manufacturing plant, or during mining operations. Many of these gauges are still analogue with the only way to monitor them is to have someone go out to each gauge and record the reading. This for many reasons is extremely inefficient but it doesn't have to be with the Boston Dynamics Spot robot dog.
How does gauge reading work?
- A landborne robot is setup to make its way to each gauge and capture a photo.
- When it's time to do a reading, the robot will power itself on and begin the task. It makes its way to each stop off point and takes a photo of the gauge.
- The photo is then processed, and the data pulled from it, after which it is then shared with the operations team. If anything doesn't look right the landborne robot can notify the team.
- After all the gauges have been read, the robot goes back to its base station to charge and offload all the data it has captured that it hasn't already sent over.
Benefits of using landborne robots
- The human is completely removed form dangerous environments, preventing injuries and possible death.
- It's much cheaper to have a robot autonomously monitoring gauges compared to a team of two spending hours doing the same.
- Reading intervals can be increased with around the clock operations and meaning more accurate data is captured.