InnoTecUK

 

InnoTecUk’s team comprising Professor Gurvinder Virk, Dr Artur Gmerek, Angelos Plastropoulos and Matthew Kimball, represented the company at the 20^th International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots in Porto, Portugal went with the same momentum as did the team at the ‘Materials Testing 17’ exhibition in Telford, UK.  Professor Virk was also the Co-General chair of the CLAWAR’17 conference with Professor Manuel Silva from ISEP (Porto Polytechnic).

The team was eager to make known the company’s innovative solutions and to promote the company’s name at an international level, especially as climbing robots is a central focus area in CLAWAR.

It was at ‘CLAWAR’17’ that InnoTecUK introduced its first two autonomous vehicles: ‘Inno-Omni’ and ‘InnoCAR’. Both are prototypes for running R&D projects and are aimed at opening robot platforms to allow university students and researchers to customise the systems to continuously improve and enhance robot functionality and develop robotic expertise.

The new robots are based on the open ROS middleware for which InnoTecUK has developed special climbing software functionalities to contribute to the climbing robot community. It is intended that these platforms will form the basis of InnoTecUK’s forthcoming challenge; The “Innoclimber challenge” for which several universities have already expressed an interest to participate in for its inaugural competition in 2018.

While in Portugal, our highly skilled professionals made it their duty to create a memorable international impact. It was this enthusiasm that resulted in an interview by the Portuguese acclaimed TV station #PortugalemDirecto.

The interview between InnoTecUK’s team and Portugal em Directo, covered some of InnoTecUK’s current, ongoing and future works, with special reference to its new activities to develop wearable exoskeletons for assistance and rehabilitation which are set to improve the mobility particularly for the elderly persons for normal daily living tasks.

To watch what the Team had to say, click here and watch from the 6^th minute for get the full story.

 

The month of September began with InnoTecUK attending two of the industries’ prestigious conferences and exhibitions; The British institute of Non-Destructive Testing’s (BINDT’s) ‘Material Testing 2017’ exhibition and ‘CLAWAR’17’; The 20^th International conference on climbing and walking robots.

At the ‘Materials Testing 2017’ exhibition in Telford, UK, InnoTecUK’s booth was without any doubt the most vibrant. Our team of highly skilled professionals came prepared to network and create long term, and sustainable relationships with those visiting our stand. However, it will not be fair to give all the credit to just our friendly staff, the most eye-catching things were our state of the art magnetic adhesion platforms HUNTER and NEPTUNE, and our vacuum adhesion platforms ICM ROVER and VORTEX SCANNER. This was the feedback we gathered from those who visited our booth at the international centre in Telford.

InnoTecUK capitalised on the attention it was receiving mainly due to the uniqueness of its remotely deployed NDT solutions and the presence of its highly skilled and resourceful experts to make known two of its new state of the art inspection platforms: ‘Neptune’ an ‘Advanced Magnetic Adhesion Marinised Crawler’, and ‘ICM Rover’ an ‘Advanced Vacuum Adhesion Inspection Crawler’, obtained in partnership with an American based company.

It was at this event that both inspection solutions made their first public appearance as products under InnoTecUK’s wings. Both inspection platforms: ‘Neptune’ and ‘ICM Rover’ like the ones before them ‘HUNTER’, ‘VORTEXSANNER’ were able to capture and retain the attention of many due to their unique features, ability to conduct inspection tasks in very hazardous environments and capacity to be used in different industrial sectors.

Pictures of 'NEPTUNE' and ICM Rover coming soon. Stay tuned.

     

To read about our performance at CLAWAR17, click here

InnoTecUK will be attending and exhibiting some of its new robot platforms at CLAWAR 2017, from 11-13 September 2017, held at the School of Engineering: Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Rua Dr. Antonia Bernardino de Almeida 431, 4200-072, Porto.

This conference organised by CLAWAR Association Limited, will cover a series of technical and social events as well as a forum to discuss the latest developments in robotics and how to tackle some of the challenges faced by robot researchers and manufacturers, especially those with interests in developing state of the art robotic solutions.

Key issues being hotly debated in the international robotics community for the rapidly evolving area of service robots is how to seamlessly get the emerging robots to work collaboratively and effectively with close human interactions for a variety of users.

InnoTecUK will benefit from the vast range of opportunities that the conference offers, such as networking with leading international researchers in mobile robotics, being updated on the latest research results in key topics such as Robot locomotion, Assistive robots, Biologically-inspired robot systems, Aerial robots, Modelling and simulation, Rehabilitation robot, Inspection applications, Climbing robots, Perception, Planning and Control.

To read more about this event, click here

 

As an active member of the Non-destructive testing (NDT) and condition monitoring (CM) community, InnoTecUK will be exhibiting at 'Materials Testing 2017'.

This event organised by THE BRITISH INSTITUTE OF NON-DESTRUCTIVE TESTING (BINDT) is one of the world's leading international exhibitions for the non-destructive testing, condition monitoring, diagnostic engineering and quality testing industries. Materials Testing 2017, will present a major forum for us to promote our products and services.

To see some of our finest crawlers, visit us on booth A15 & A16, from the 5^th to the 7^th of September 2017 at The International centre, Telford, U.K.

Present at our booth will be our team of professionals ready to answer your questions about our products and services, all with a great understanding of the issues facing industries such as the Oil and Gas industry, Aerospace industry, Renewable energy industry etc.

This will equally be an astounding opportunity for anyone with an interest in robotics and automation to see some of our crawlers in action, and to assess the capabilities of some of our most innovative crawling and climbing robots. Thus, providing a platform to discuss how we could potentially support your business.

Running parallel to Materials Testing 2017, is the 56th British annual NDT conference (NDT 2017), also organised by BINDT. The conference will involve a comprehensive series of events covering a wide range of subjects patterning to the NDT industry, creating an even bigger opportunity for us to network, learn ad share ideas.

To read more about these event, click here.

InnoTecUK’s Technical Director Professor Gurvinder S. Virk recently had an interview with the Industrial Robot Journal. Details of the interview have been also published on robotics business review to provide intelligence for the global robotics industry.

In his interview, Gurvinder shares his expertise in the field of robotics, control, engineering, and computer science, and discusses the importance of international robot standardisation for robot manufacturers and the wider community.

With regards to his expertise, Gurvinder has for the last 35 years produced over 350 referred publications, filed four patents, been involved with several spin out commercial ventures, led the creation of the first International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) safety standard for personal care robots (EN ISO 13482), presided over the ARGOS Challenge committee to develop autonomous robots for oil and gas production sites and is currently working on wearable exoskeletons aimed at providing affordable solutions to assist elderly persons perform normal daily activities.

It is Gurvinder’s extensive knowledge in robotics that permits him to offer deep insights into how robotic safety standards are formulated and implemented and how the regulatory frame work can be adopted in realising robot products for facilitating safe Human Robot interaction.

In this interview, he describes the best methods for adopting robot safety standards, and goes on to describe how international robot safety standards are administered, the role of manufacturers in robot safety, and what might happen in the event of a robot causing harm in non-safety-compliant robot products.

To read what Gurvinder had to say, click here.

The advent of robots in medicine and healthcare is continously evolving and proving to be efficient and effective at providing novel solutions for diagnosing and treating patients.

The 'Da Vinci surgical system', a tele-operated medical robot used for prostatectomy (the removal of all, or part of the prostate), was one of the first robotised solutions to be adopted and the system has been used to conduct over 20,000 surgeries already.

This surgical system is helping surgeons carry out precise operations with enhanced vision and more precise control to achieve better clinical outcomes for patients, all of which were never previously thought possible.

On 8 February 2017, InnoTecUK’s Technical Director Prof. Gurvinder S. Virk will, alongside other medical robot experts, lead a workshop in South Korea in collaboration with Korea Association of Robot Industry, to address long-standing issues in medicine and discuss the future implementation of medical robots for enhancing healthcare systems globally.

With over 20 years experience of robotic developments, Prof. Virk has extensive knowledge of emerging robots and robot systems in service and medical sectors and how the new robots should be regulated to ensure basic safety and essential performance to create the new urgently needed robot markets. He is convenor of the ISO TC299 and IEC SC62A JWG5 on Medical robot safety which has formulated IEC TR 60601-4-1 Medical electrical equipment - Part 4-1: Guidance and interpretation – Medical electrical equipment and medical electrical systems employing a degree of autonomy. We was also the Convenor of ISO TC299/WG2 which published the safety standard for personal care robots (ISO 13482 Robots and robotic devices – Safetyrequirements for personal care robots).

It is clear that the role of new service robots will grow in many medical and non-medical domains and for the new robots to be safe and effective, it is necessary to understand the variety of human-robot interactions needed and how close human-robot interaction can be facilitated and regulated internationally.

Follow the links below to find out more about the workshop.

http://www.koros.or.kr/

http://www.koros.or.kr/sub063_board_content.asp?idx=284&page=1 . (www.koros.or.kr -> 참여마당 -> 공지사항)

 

Visit us at Innovate2016 Exhibition - We will be showcasing the latest evolutions of our robots based on our successful Hunter & VortexScanner platforms

Visit us at Booth FO13 to see our bespoke robotic inspection platforms for NDT systems at the forthcoming NDT World Conference http://www.wcndt2016.com

An advertisement on Cleanship, a collaborative project funded by the European Commission where InnoTecUK was involved as a SME participant, was recently published in the Inside Marine Magazine Issue M13 2014. The advert details an effective non-invasive solution for improving ship maintenance, prevention of fouling and detection of fouling through the development of an integrated system. To view the advert please click here  CleanShip Advert For more details on how to get a copy of the magazine please click here.  

An article on TidalSense Demo, a project where InnoTecUK is the co-ordinator and lead participant, was recently published in Horizon – The EU Research & Innovation Magazine. The article highlights the great work being done through the project in the Tidal Energy sector to develop condition monitoring systems to continuously check the integrity of the exposed rotor blades. For more details, please click here.

TidalSense Demo, a project co-ordinated by InnoTecUK, was highlighted by the European Commission in CORDIS, which is European Commission’s primary public repository and portal to disseminate information on key EU-funded research projects and their results in the broadest sense. An article was also published on CORDIS titled ‘Riding the wave of momentum for tidal power’ which provides a brief of the TidalSense Demo project and shows the importance of the system. For more details, please click here.

An article on CORETO, a project being co-ordinated by InnoTecUK, was recently published in World Wind Technology Magazine. The article highlighted the goal of the project to spearhead new structural rehabilitation techniques that will make repairing wind turbine blades possible on site. The project is an ambitious one and as a consortium, we are up to the challenge! For more details, please click here.