Applications

Confined spaces

OC Robotics develops snake-arm robots for confined spaces.

Historically automation has focused on tasks in unconfined spaces. We are all familiar with robots on production lines where there is plenty of room in which to operate.

What is a confined space?

Confined spaces exist by design (e.g. aircraft engine), by failure (e.g. collapsed building) or naturally (e.g. human body).

It is important to realise that confined spaces only exist where there is a reason why the confined space should not or cannot be converted into an unconfined space. In other words, a confined space occurs when you cannot or do not want to take apart or dismantle for whatever reason.

Confined spaces exist in nuclear reactors, aircraft, the human body, industrial processing plant, underwater environments, ship-building, space. Actually, when you consider buildings, roads, pipelines and other man-made spaces, it becomes clear that the world is full of awkward confined spaces.

The technical challenge in confined spaces is to avoid obstacles - to snake into cluttered environments without disturbing or damaging the environment.

OC Robotics snake-arm robots have been developed to reach into confined spaces. These robots have many joints and so, unlike conventional robots, they do not have prominent elbows. This means the whole device can follow where the tip has gone. The operator only directs the tip which makes controlling these devices intuitive and easy to learn.

The commercial advantage for using snake-arm robots is that taking things apart costs time and money and can cause damage. There are also increasingly restrictive confined spaces regulations, which raises the cost of manual access, especially in dirty and dangerous environments.

Snake-arm robots can add value as well as saving money. For instance snake-arm robots may enable you to design and build in a different way - e.g. automating low access assembly and designing for automated maintenance that avoids disassembly.

We have provided a number of case studies that explore these issues in more detail. Contact us to discuss your own particular requirements.