Home » Inspection and Wash, the robots that protect Genoa from another tragedy like that of Morandi

Inspection and Wash, the robots that protect Genoa from another tragedy like that of Morandi

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The robots are up there, at a height of 50 meters, all day, under the sun, the rain, the wind strong. There are four of them, two on each side, they are up there, hanging outside the San Giorgio bridge, and waiting. They wait for the time to come and then get out of their bays, jump into action, and get to work. A bit like Grendizer and Mazinger Z, who, when needed, came out of their secret base and got busy. Unlike Grendizer and Mazinger, they are not works of fantasy but of the genius of the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, then made by the Camozzi group on commission from Seastema and Cetena.

And yet, just like Grendizer and Mazinger, they have an important task: to save our lives and above all prevent what happened at 11.36 on 14 August 2018 from happening again, when the Morandi viaduct, the one that crossed the Polcevera before the San Giorgio, collapsed on itself causing the death of 43 people. So, suddenly. Without anyone expecting it. Today it could no longer happen: “Our robots would have understood, perhaps not that day or the day before, but certainly in the previous months and years, that something was wrong, that there were anomalies and oscillations”, we he said Ferdinando Cannella, head of the Iit Industrial Robotics Laboratory and at the head of the team of just 3 people who since November 2018 has worked on the design of these highly refined machines, practically unique in the world.

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The robots mounted outside the San Giorgio bridge

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Two robots for two different jobs
There are two robots (on each side) because they have two different tasks, they are all bright yellow, they have carbon fiber structure, when they are in operation they cross the bridge on tracks and they each weigh about 2.5 tons. Like a big SUV, more or less.

What is above is Robot Wash: it has 56 wheels, it is over 3 and a half meters high and almost 8 long and as the name implies, it takes care of cleaning. About what? “Glass wind barriers, which must remain clean mainly for aesthetic reasons – explained Cinnamon – and solar panels that provide the bridge with the energy it needs”. For lighting? “Yes, but not only: they also feed the air conditioning and dehumidification system of the body under the asphalt”. The caisson is part of the supporting structure of the viaduct: it is made of steel and keeping it at the right temperature and the right degree of humidity makes it less sensitive to the passage of time, bad weather and saline. Robot Wash is also sustainable: its sensors allow it to evaluate when and how much to intervene on each single panel e the water used for washing comes from the rain, which is collected for this; not only: in particularly dry periods (and therefore of lack of water in the tanks) it is able to blow compressed air to clean the surfaces.

Below him there is Robot Inspection, perhaps the more important of the two: it has 82 wheels that allow it to move on two axes, is over 7 meters wide and is equipped with a movable arm that can extend for about 17 meters, so you can get to the center of the bridge. It is equipped with high-resolution cameras and sensors and can be enriched with infrared or 3d cameras to check the entire viaduct, from top to bottom, from every possible angle, looking for rust, cracks, swelling, any anomalies or signs of deterioration. .

In practice: how the monitoring robot works
Together with the two machines there are the beyond 250 sensors fissi installati da Cetena, sensitive to vibrations and longitudinal, transverse or tilt movements, but Robot Inspection can do much more, having the ability to move back and forth along the bridge. Cannella explained to Italian Tech that it has not yet entered into operation, because its operation depends on Autostrade per l’Italia, which has been managing the San Giorgio for over a year and still has to establish the schedule of maintenance and monitoring, but has in any case already traveled “tens of kilometers on the viaduct, both during the testing phase and to carry out the complete scan and mapping”. What is it for? “That’s what it is in jargon it is called zero point, the reference model with which to compare subsequent scans to understand if something is wrong ”.

It will work like this: when it has the green light from a human operator, the robot starts to move along the bridge in a completely autonomous way, on both sides, taking about 25,000 photographs. It takes more or less a week, not because it is slow but because it is attentive: to do its job properly, it needs good conditions of light and visibility and if it is not there (because it is night, because it rains very hard, because it is cloudy ) stops and waits. After monitoring, the robot compares the result of its inspection with the initial scan, the reference model: check point by point, every point where he took a photo, and then evaluate if everything is okay. Evaluate alone, thanks to the so-called pattern analysis: artificial intelligence allows him to understand if that shadow that is seen at that point can hide a problem or is only due to a cloud, if the oscillation he has perceived is a symptom of something more serious or linked to the wind, that in Val Polcevera can blow even over 50 per hour, and so on.

In short, it’s an AI that does what AIs are very good at: analyzes a huge amount of data and leafs through tens of thousands of photographs, sending to human colleagues only those that she thinks would need further study. They are then the ones who will decide whether the in-depth analysis is necessary, whether to mount the cameras mentioned above on Robot Inspection (infrared e 3d) and let him make another pass right in the points concerned.

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The future is reliable technology
It is impossible to understand precisely how much all this cost, how much it would cost to replicate such a system elsewhere (“In the order of millions of euros”, they told us from the IIT), but you can know what it takes to keep it operational: a mega computer, infinite quantities of Ram and processors with unimaginable computing capabilities? Not at all: “To do everything, absolutely normal computers are enough – Cinella confessed to us – They are powerful, but they are machines accessible to everyone, like those that any of us could buy in any electronics store”. Because? “We designed this technology to be as simple as possible, because hardware and software are above all reliable: it is useless to schedule monitoring and maintenance if then when it is time to do them … the machines that should do them are under maintenance “. All this simplicity should not surprise: “Besides, the computer that took us to the moon was practically a calculator”, Cinella reminded Italian Tech with a smile.

Nor will all this simplicity translate into ineffectiveness, on the contrary: “Three, four, five years ago, our robots would have been able to see the cracks in the concrete, through which water can enter (which probably contributed to the collapse of the Morandi, ed) ”, Cinella reiterated at the end of our chat. More importantly: “These machines are an open-air laboratory, they can serve as an example for other infrastructures, they can be used all over the world, even for other purposes, also to help workers in heavy work (they can support up to 80 kg, ed), are a practical demonstration of how data collection and processing works through artificial intelligences ”.

I am an example of what the future holds in this field and how technology can help us to live better, and even more serene. And never mind if Wash looks like an overweight canary and Inspection is long and curved like a giant banana: the important thing is that they do their job well.

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