RDI Adds Vibration Analysis to Industrial Operations
RDI Technologies, which develops Motion Amplification vibration analysis solutions, has announced that it is bringing this technology to Boston Dynamics’ mobile robot, Spot. The new camera-based solution, Iris Explorer payload for Spot, will combine the mobility and automation of Spot with the vibration analysis technology from RDI.
The combination will allow industrial customers to take next-generation vibration analysis right to the asset in even the most hazardous or remote environments, RDI said. The Iris Explorer robotic route-based vibration analysis solution means customers can perform high volume, highly repeatable autonomous route-based vibration analysis with reduced risk and increased efficiency.
“Our integration with Boston Dynamics creates significant opportunities to transform asset heavy industries,” said Jeff Hay, CEO of RDI Technologies. “Vibration analysis is a high value part of every asset maintenance program. In bringing together industry leading vibration analysis and robotics in RDI’s Iris Explorer Spot payload, we’re providing critical tools to address challenging business problems – increasing safety and productivity while improving operations and assets in complex industrial environments. We’re already seeing customers gain more value from the unique pairing of Motion Amplification technology with Spot’s agility and teleoperation capabilities.”
The technology can measure deflection, displacement, movement and vibration not visible to the human eye. It turns every pixel in the camera’s view into a sensor capable of measuring vibration or movement with high levels of accuracy, RDI said. It provides instant visual imagery of hard-to-detect faults such as misalignment, bending, soft foot and separation, along with trending capability of vibration readings for monitoring of chronic or emergent issues.
Active condition monitoring is time-consuming, meticulous work, the company said; if rushed or done improperly, data has little value and entire routes must be redone. Industrial operations can benefit from Iris Explorer’s Automated Feature Finding which provides the ability to repeatedly and easily capture the exact same image data every time, across every route, for every asset, and in any environment, as often as needed.
The Iris Explorer payload can capture the full field of view of an asset and allows for conditional, automated data triggers. This means customers experience full data flexibility, allowing them to focus on the most relevant data, without the need to repeat routes, which is a common problem in asset maintenance. Combined with Spot, route-based operations become seamlessly automated and can be remotely monitored. Customers can apply the same observation protocols on the thousandth inspection as it was programmed to do on the first, without human bias while controlling and performing routes remotely across plants, sites, or different regions.
For manufacturing, power and utility generation, mining, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear customers who want to maintain peak performance of their assets, while reducing risk and maintaining compliance, the Iris Explorer Spot payload allows users to cover more assets in a fraction of the time, allowing for more asset coverage while acquiring more diverse and consistent data at reduced human risk, RDI said.
For more details on the system, visit the RDI Technologies website here.
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