Rockwell to partner with Taurob to provide robotic inspection solutions

Rockwell Automation has announced it has signed an agreement with Austrian company Taurob to provide a holistic robotic solution that would enable industrial organisations to move towards autonomous operations in their facilities. Taurob designs and manufactures ground robots for inspection, maintenance and data collection at industrial sites.

Kalypso, Rockwell’s digital services business, and Taurob will work together to provide an end-to-end robotic automation solution that the companies say will herald the next phase in industrial automation and transformation.

“In working towards the goal of autonomous operations, many industrial companies have considered the design of facilities, connectivity, digital solutions and artificial intelligence, but manual inspection of facilities is still commonplace,” said Matt Graves, Kalypso digital principal, process industries. “As a next phase in industrial automation, companies are now looking at how to automate fleets of inspection robots using digital twin and IIoT technologies. This partnership will be a huge step in helping our clients meet their efficiency, net zero and safety goals.”

Taurob’s robots are designed to perform missions under harsh environmental conditions to gather video, audio and sensor data, detect gas leaks and manipulate valves.

Autonomous operations have long been an aspiration across industrial process sectors such as oil and gas, mining and chemicals due to the hazardous working environments. Taurob’s robots are ATEX certified, a strict and compulsory certification that allows them to work in the oil and gas industry. They also offer high resistance to hot environments and up to four hours of mission runtime, among other advantages.

Kalypso and Taurob will provide a holistic solution from the physical robot and sensors through to the robot supervision software, for mission data analysis using AI/ML and systems integration. This will allow organisations to move towards autonomous operations with the business value of a solution for inspection and maintenance that increases personnel safety, reduces OPEX and improves production throughput.

“Our partnership with Rockwell will become a game changer with respect to scaling our unique ATEX-certified robots around the world,” said Taurob’s co-founder and managing director, Matthias Biegl. “Our respective expertise complements one another to offer an integrated solution, in addition to which we will be able to streamline sales and marketing efforts to optimise and enhance efficiency for our clients on a variety of industrial sites.”

Image caption: Taurob Inspector robot. Image credit: taurob.com