that no one else dies hanging from a scaffold
During these weeks it has circulated a video about a robot climbing the curved surface of a metal tank, attached to the sheet metal like a limpet, while polishing and removing rust without a human having to hang from a rope to do it. In our parts it is quite surprising to see this, but in China there are a good handful of companies that offer robots specialized in work at height, and that is why it occurred to me that perhaps it is a good idea to tell in this article what is interesting about this new scene of industrial robots. The machine with which I have introduced the article belongs to Shihe Robotics, a Chinese company known internationally as RobotPlusPlus (or Robot++), and is just one of the many companies that star in the sector of “wall-climbing” robots or Spider-Man robots (which I like better) for work at height. What exactly is it about? They are robots capable of adhering to vertical, curved surfaces or even ceilings (whether metal, concrete, glass) and moving across them to perform tasks such as welding, cleaning, painting, inspection or rust removal. The underlying idea is to replace the operators who today work hanging from harnesses, scaffolding or lifting baskets in environments such as ship hulls, wind towers, chemical tanks or skyscraper facades, where a failure or a gust of wind can cost a life. Shihe Robotics. The company was founded in 2015 by Xu Huayang, a doctor from Tsinghua University, one of the most prestigious technical institutions in China, who grew up near the Shihe Riverin the province of Henan, and decided to focus his career on robotics for hazardous work at height after a first experience in Tsinghua itself. According to collect According to the specialized media HTX Insights, the product that gave the company its first commercial traction was a robot to remove rust from the hulls of ships, a dangerous and very laborious task in the ship repair industry, with which Shihe achieved an efficiency between five and six times greater than that of manual work and a relevant share in the Chinese market. The money behind it. Shihe already has several investment rounds under his belt. The Chinese portal 36Kr once reported that the company closed a Pre-A round of 20 million yuan led by Baidu venture capital fund, with a post-investment valuation of 120 million yuan. More recently, according to HTX Insights, Shihe completed a Series C round of several hundred million yuan, jointly led by Qianggang Capital and Zhongji InnoLight, with participation from Guangxi Investment Capital, Guohai Securities, Junton Capital and its long-time investor Fosun RuiZheng. It is clear that there is a certain investor appetite for robotics, but in this case we also see that there are many companies and private investors out there that have found a vein in this niche of wall-climbing industrial robots, especially considering that they solve a real problem, which is that of danger at heights. Robot specialized in removing rust from ships. Image: ZDNews What are your robots for in practice? The founder himself explained to 36Kr that there are a good number of scenarios where these robots already make commercial sense, among them the removal of rust on the sides of ships, the spray painting of chemical tanks, the inspection of thermal power plant boilers, the maintenance of wind towers, the cleaning of solar panels, the inspection of pipes or the cleaning of building facades, a set of tasks that, according to his calculations, moves a market of about 60 billion yuan a year alone in China. The company manufactures its range under the name “HML”where the “H” corresponds to heavy models with a load capacity greater than 100 kg for tasks such as grinding or welding, and the “M” to medium load models, around 60 kg, designed for spraying water or paint in deoxidation and coating tasks. According to the company’s own data, its robots reach a travel speed of 10 meters per minute, with an average performance twice that of a human operator and at half the cost. How they stay stuck to the wall. There is no single method, since some use permanent magnets when the surface is metallic, such as the hull of a ship or a steel wind tower; others resort to vacuum suction, useful on glass, concrete or other non-magnetic materials; and there is a third group that imitates gecko lizards, with microfiber pads that adhere by molecular forces without leaving residue. an article published in the Journal of Field Robotics points out that these robots have become essential equipment for high-altitude infrastructure maintenance, large-scale industrial inspection, and emergency response. There are many more companies. AKA Robotics operates in Shenzhen, with its “WallHiker” rangespecialized in robots that adhere to wind towers using a double system of cables and permanent magnetic adsorption, operated remotely from the ground to reduce the risk of technicians working with ropes at high altitudes. Last June, China Daily counted that a team from Harbin Engineering University (eight people, including professors and students in their early twenties) deployed a climbing robot at a Nanjing wind plant that, instead of magnets, uses suction, allowing it to adhere to metal, glass and other smooth surfaces without damaging the protective coatings on the towers, and that can carry up to five kilos of inspection equipment capable of detecting cracks, rust and other defects. One of its managers, Professor Zhang Lanyong, said that “the harsh winter in Heilongjiang greatly complicates the inspection of electrical installations” and that manually climbing the towers “is very risky”, while the robot withstands low temperatures and strong winds. What happens in the United States. Outside of China, the best known example is Gecko Roboticsan American company born around Carnegie Mellon in 2016 that has brought this technology to the military field. According to the Chinese specialized media Zhidongxi, Gecko has signed a contract to deploy its climbing robots, fixed sensors and artificial intelligence systems on eighteen ships … Read more
