According to EU data, 330,000 railway bridges (66% of the total in Europe) are more than 50 years old, and almost 60% of road and railway bridges (840,000 bridges) are made of concrete. In addition, of the 1.5 million bridges in Europe, some 55,000 require continuous inspection due to their criticality or age.

 

PILOTING proposes the adaptation, integration, and demonstration of robotic solutions, in an integrated platform for infrastructure inspection. One of the main milestones within the project is to complete large-scale demonstration of the technologies developed in the three scenarios: refineries, viaduct/bridges and tunnels.

 

This event was the first demonstration, which corresponds to the viaduct scenario. In particular, in the Arroyo del Espinazo viaduct, Álora, Málaga, managed by Ferrovial.

 

This demonstration showed the validation of the PILOTING last developments and was organized by CATEC, Ferrovial and the University of Seville.

 

During this event, two robotic platforms were tested and demonstrated in the following PILOTING Uses Cases:

• AEROCAM: Viaduct Visual Inspection Use Case. General visual inspection and detailed visual inspection of possible defects detected (CATEC).
• VIAD-DRONE: Multifunctional drone for contact inspection of viaducts (USE). This drone will be tested in the Viaduct sensor installations and Viaduct surveying targets installation for geometrical precise measurements uses cases

 

This is the first test scenario where these technologies have been validated, but the PILOTING Project covers other robotic solutions and new scenarios in other key industries such as refinery (in France) and tunnels (in Greece) that will be seen soon.