SBIR Phase I: Autonomous Inspection Robot for Seal Inspection of Floating Roof Storage Tanks

Award ID: 2233637

he broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to develop an autonomous, robotic inspection system to eliminate manual inspection methods in confined and dangerous spaces. The innovation will use a robot to provide quantitative condition and emissions data for an estimated 150,000 floating roof tanks in the nations aging infrastructure. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and similar agencies across the globe, require tanks to be routinely inspected, but companies also want to remove personnel from confined spaces and avoid exposure to poisonous gasses, asphyxiation, heat exhaustion, falling accidents, etc. Confined space entries caused 1,300 U.S. deaths between 2011 and 2018. The autonomous robot reduces expenses related to maintenance and repair and allows better quantitative assessment of the seal integrity, which allows companies to perform maintenance based on the asset condition and not frequency-based schedules. An industry trend in recent years is to recreate the state of their assets digitally - both visually and quantitatively. The high-resolution data provided through this effort supports these 'digital twins.' Also, once the robot is certified for explosive environments, design features can be reused to produce other robots which further improve development cost and safety. This SBIR Phase I project will create an autonomous robotic inspection system which eliminates manual, confined-space inspection methods and requires only one technician to deploy the robot from the top of the tank wall. The wall-climbing robot is capable of inspecting both the floating-roof storage tanks upper (weather) and lower (primary) seals using a bifurcated (inverse periscope) geometry which places sensors in the gap between the seals while prime movers, adhesion elements, and a controller are above the seals. The bifurcated design simplifies safety feature design by minimizing the size and complexity of device components between the seals. The bifurcated design enables the continuous use of a tether for isolating the power source and provides a positive pressure surge system. After insertion, the robot proceeds to circumnavigate the inner tank shell in a stable manner, overcoming the large frictional forces that exist between the tank wall and the upper seal. The robotic system gathers real-time, high-resolution, and continuous data about the state of the seals. High-resolution visual data characterizes the top of the seal, and a proprietary physical feeler mechanism characterizes the seal gap. This information results in a fast, safe, and accurate inspection of the tanks seal. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Ela Mirowski