Technology

Special projects

Confined spaces come in all shapes and sizes. Access to the confined space itself may also be limited. Oil rigs, nuclear reactors, space stations, submarines, refineries and processing plants may all require a unique solution.

Specials tend to be either large devices (as above) or devices for very specific environments such as liquid metal, ocean floor, high pressure, high temperature, vacuum, corrosive or non-magnetic.

The longest snake-arm we have considered to date is 100m in length for complex "non-piggable" pipework inspection. Another customer requested a snake-arm with a jack-hammer on the end for cleaning large processing tanks. We have also fired high-impulse disrupter weapons from the tip of a slender snake-arm. The compliant nature of the arm can be used to attenuate extreme shock loading.

Compliant robot arms also have huge potential as the base technology for robots operating in human spaces. Shops, offices, hospitals, airports, hotels, museums are all confined spaces. In fact, worse than that, all the obstacles are moving around randomly at high speed. These are the ultimate in complex confined spaces.

Snake-arm robots are also the perfect device for Natural Orifice Transgastric Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES). OC Robotics fully supports the objectives of i-Snake and has patented technology that is relevant to the medical sector.

OC Robotics has all the in-house capability to design, build, and test bespoke devices as well as the ability to build small batch products.

Contact us to discuss your unique challenge.