Researchers from seven European countries have today tested their drone inspection developments at the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC) Sabadell Rambla facilities in the former FGC Sabadell Rambla train station as part of a week of tests organised by the Eurecat technology centre for the Aero-Train consortium.

The event took place in a technology integration week split between the Eurecat site in Cerdanyola and the Sabadell Rambla facility in which early stage researchers have addressed the inspection and maintenance sector’s challenges by using autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles to minimise the risks and costs associated with work at height and in confined spaces while also streamlining inspections and enhancing their quality.

“Research in robotics is continuing to make headway in areas such as autonomy and decision-making capabilities,” say Julián Cayero, head of the Aerial Robotics line at Eurecat. “Aero-Train has set the goal of training a generation of researchers who will push the boundaries of aerial robotics by exploring fields such as teleportation, human-robot interaction, contact inspection and aerial manipulation.”

During a whole week spent on integrating knowledge in the Aero-Train project, “researchers have tested the autonomous navigation capabilities of the platforms under development in environments without access to satellite positioning systems such as GPS or Galileo,” adds Daniel Serrano, director of Eurecat’s Robotics Unit.

This makes it difficult to localise the robot which has to solve the problem by factoring in on-board sensor technology. The second challenge is establishing contact with the environment in which aircraft fitted with actuators designed for this purpose have to recognise a target and position themselves relative to it until they get to it.

“More and more applications are being solved by drones, but normally these aircraft are used passively, piloted and as a means of delivering three-dimensional movement capabilities to cameras and other sensors, so it is essential to shift towards more advanced developments,” argues Cayero.

The consortium has a budget of €4.1 million and 14 partners from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Spain, Italy and Switzerland.

The tests were run at the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya Sabadell Rambla facility, one of the company’s former stations and now out of service which in 2017 was converted into a railway development centre drawing on its existing infrastructure. Since then, the facility has been used for training law enforcement agencies in railway emergencies and professional fieldwork for FGC staff. The centre delivers an innovative vision of training, especially in roles and tasks which call for putting the person in a situation that is as close as possible to the real thing.

Oriol Juncadella, director of FGC’s operator, underscores the uniqueness of the Sabadell Rambla facility which makes it possible to run fieldwork like today as if it were a conventional station. “This facility is identical to a station in operation anywhere else on the line with its tracks, platforms, train, signalling, public address system, tunnel and so on.” The conversion of the former Sabadell Rambla station means “we can leverage the existing infrastructure for fieldwork training and avoid having a disused station in the centre of Sabadell.”

Infrastructure maintenance

The consortium has noted that industrial sectors such as energy, transport, oil and gas and chemical industries commit considerable resources to ensuring the operational integrity of their assets. Older EU member states spend 3.9 percent of their GDP on financing infrastructure-related activities while new member states allocate roughly 5.1 percent of their GDP.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Economic Forum (WEF), McKinsey and Standard and Poor’s agree that between now and 2030, up to €1.2 trillion in annual infrastructure investment is needed in Europe, much of which will have to be earmarked for maintaining ageing infrastructure in many European countries.

In recent years there have also been a large number of accidents involving operations and maintenance of these infrastructures. Most accidents caused by infrastructure hazards are related to maintenance, mainly with a human factor.

Aero-Train is a medium-term initiative aimed at providing early stage researchers with robust interdisciplinary training at the intersection of Intelligent Mechatronics, Artificial Intelligence and Human-Machine Interaction to meet the challenges of automating monitoring and repair of the structural health of civil and industrial infrastructure. It also seeks to empower a new generation of researchers with tools which enhance creativity and innovation in this field.

More information about the project is available at https://eurecat.org/portfolio-items/aero-train/ and https://www.aerotrain-etn.eu/