The ‘Keyper’, a robot dog with an advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, is the new person in charge of monitoring and controlling the Carbides Metálicos plant in the Morell chemical estate (Tarragonès). The machine is autonomous and can make surveillance rounds every hour, all day, without anyone guiding it.
The Keyper, which is the size of a Labrador retriever, is equipped with sensors, cameras and microphones and detects anomalies or incidents, such as “vapor and gas leaks or hot spots”. If this happens, it alerts the security and maintenance teams, sending data to central control that you can do without Internet or GPS.
Carburos Metálicos will test you for a year with the aim of improving safety, reducing production stops and making it more efficient.
The new Keyper automatic robot has a “pioneering control system” that Carburos Metálicos will put into operation by Keybotic, a Barcelona-based industrial autonomous robotics start-up that designs, manufactures and sells robots that can interpret “complex environments “like a chemical plant. His job will be to make rounds around the El Morell plant with the aim of increasing safety, improving productivity efficiency and specifying inspections with “predictive maintenance”.
The Tarragona plant is the first to incorporate this technology into its facilities. “Carbides Metálicos are the first clients we will have and they are great because they let us try a lot and we complement each other very well because we will both be able to get a lot out of it,” said Irene Gómez, co-founder and CEO of Keybotic. The company has other projects in the study phase that may be implemented in the future.
With a Keyper robot, it will be possible to monitor the 12,000 square meter extension of the Carbidos Metálicos plant in Tarragona. The robot will carry out a first month of tests to finish adjusting and adapting its operation. The orography of the industry is a “challenge” for the robot because the terrain has different surfaces, such as grass, stones, asphalt, unevenness and stairs, and it will also have to “coexist” with the fleet of tanker trucks that go in and out of the factory.
The machine records and interprets thermographies, detects and reads pressure gauges and meters, analyzes the sound of engines and equipment, and can make a three-dimensional map of the entire environment. In addition to alerting the control center if it detects anomalies, it has the ability to perform “predictive analysis” and create reports with all the data collected, which it sends without the need for an Internet connection or GPS.
The activity of the Morell plant focuses on the separation of gases from the air (oxygen, nitrogen and argon) and Keper can foresee leaks and anticipate accidents before they occur, a “very important advance” for the chemical sector. “In an inspection round, it can detect a temperature that should not be and if there is a leak, it sends the information so that a person can carry out an inspection,” Gómez has exemplified.
The collaboration between Carburos Metálicos and the company will last for at least one year. Roland Clarke, director of operations and engineering at Carburos Metálicos (Air Products group), has highlighted that the Keyper is “a great help” for the operations team because it allows rounds to be carried out every hour, and “forget’n”, because nobody will guide and notify “if it detects something”.
The autonomous navigation system has earned Keybotic the first prize in robotics from DARPA, the most prestigious competition in the world. This technology has been put to the test by rescues and in the United States. The Keyper had to find a group of people who were inside caves more than 12 kilometers away and autonomously found and located them for the emergency bodies.
