UK Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Hub for Offshore Energy Asset Integrity Management

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ISCF
ISCF
ISCF
ISCF
ISCF

£76,116,170

Oct. 1, 2017

March 31, 2022

The international offshore energy industry currently faces the triple challenges of an oil price expected to remain less than $50 a barrel, significant expensive decommissioning commitments of old infrastructure (especially North Sea) and small margins on the traded commodity price per KWh of offshore renewable energy. Further, the offshore workforce is ageing as new generations of suitable graduates prefer not to work in hazardous places offshore. Operators therefore seek more cost effective, safe methods and business models for inspection, repair and maintenance of their topside and marine offshore infrastructure. Robotics and artificial intelligence are seen as key enablers in this regard as fewer staff offshore reduces cost, increases safety and workplace appeal.

The long-term industry vision is thus for a completely autonomous offshore energy field, operated, inspected and maintained from the shore. The time is now right to further develop, integrate and de-risk these into certifiable evaluation prototypes because there is a pressing need to keep UK offshore oil and renewable energy fields economic, and to develop more productive and agile products and services that UK startups, SMEs and the supply chain can export internationally. This will maintain a key economic sector currently worth £40 billion and 440,000 jobs to the UK economy, and a supply chain adding a further £6 billion in exports of goods and services.

The ORCA Hub is an ambitious initiative that brings together internationally leading experts from 5 UK universities with over 30 industry partners (>£17.5M investment). Led by the Edinburgh Centre of Robotics (HWU/UoE), in collaboration with Imperial College, Oxford and Liverpool Universities, this multi-disciplinary consortium brings its unique expertise in: Subsea (HWU), Ground (UoE, Oxf) and Aerial robotics (ICL); as well as human-machine interaction (HWU, UoE), innovative sensors for Non Destructive Evaluation and low-cost sensor networks (ICL, UoE); and asset management and certification (HWU, UoE, LIV).

The Hub will provide game-changing, remote solutions using robotics and AI that are readily integratable with existing and future assets and sensors, and that can operate and interact safely in autonomous or semi-autonomous modes in complex and cluttered environments. We will develop robotics solutions enabling accurate mapping of, navigation around and interaction with offshore assets that support the deployment of sensors networks for asset monitoring. Human-machine systems will be able to co-operate with remotely located human operators through an intelligent interface that manages the cognitive load of users in these complex, high-risk situations. Robots and sensors will be integrated into a broad asset integrity information and planning platform that supports self-certification of the assets and robots.

Potential Impact:
Our project represents an unprecedented effort to use Robotics and AI to revolutionise Asset Integrity Management in the offshore energy sector to enable cheaper, safer and more efficient working practices and move towards a fully autonomous offshore energy field, operated, inspected and maintained from the shore. Up to £17.8M of cash support from the industry demonstrates the timeliness and strong industry interest for our research agenda. Beyond its academic impact detailed elsewhere, this project will bring about a step change in the feasibility of large scale monitoring for subsea assets such as cables, risers, seabed structures and marine energy devices. To maximise the impact of our research, we have built in mechanisms to maximise the translation of research into innovation, products and industry take-up.

1- Strong industry involvement: Our initial research focus is built around 6 developed Use Cases and 7 Capability Challenges for RAI applied to offshore energy asset integrity for marine, topside (i.e. on platform) and aerial domains developed in collaboration with industry (initial workshop July 2017, 40 people attending). Regular 6-monthly demonstrations of existing research will inform our partners of the evolving maturity of the research and trigger potential exploitation. Annual workshops to refine these and update the research roadmap will be organised by the Hub with the support and guidance of our Industrial Leadership and Opportunities Panel (ILOP). From these, Joint Industry Projects (JIPs) will form from Open Calls initiated by ILOP, the PI and the academic team. These projects will be funded from the £20M Partnership Resource Fund (PRF) (£2.6M EPSRC, £17.8M industry partners). JIPs will comprise SMEs, startups and others from the supply chain to make capabilities more robust, reliable and certifiable in increasingly realistic domains up to TRL7. These efforts will be supported by a full time impact manager.

2- Fostering wider collaborations: The hub will expand its research and innovation reach to other RAI Hubs initially through the bi-annual Hub PI meetings, where opportunities across hub boundaries will be identified. We will aim to align common science and innovation goals through the relevant Hub management structures to provide greater gearing whilst recognising the distinctness of the environments and markets. Regular Open Calls will seek research partners (funded by both EPSRC and Partners from the PRF) to close scientific gaps in the core WP programme based on advice by the International Scientific Advisory Panel (ISAP). This funding will be accessible by the best teams across the world, thus fostering collaborations at an international level. We will also seek to exploit synergies created from other hubs in other domains to have an impact on the anticipated ISCF RAI Challenge funding in 2019. Through this PI Forum, we will also reach out to the successful iUK projects (parallel ISCF RAI call) to seek synergies, overlap and opportunities for rapid innovation advancements.
Standardisation: A crucial output of the project will be working closely with regulators, especially project partner Lloyds Register, to develop standards and formal requirements for offshore RAI self-certification. We will also explore defining an ISO industry standard for dialogue act annotation for interaction with autonomous systems and AI (similar to e.g. DiAML) to encourage adoption of the developed techniques in a variety of domains.

3- Engaging the wider public in research: We have a wide experience of public engagement through our RAS-CDT (BBC News @10, Blue Peter, Sky News, Twitter, Facebook) and will continue to our engagement strategy supported by our full time Hub Manager.