After the ARGOS Challenge kick-off meeting held on 22-24 September on Total’s site in Pau, France, the FOXIRIS team, led by GMV with IdMind as robot manufacturer and CAR-UPM as academic partner, has now begun the phase of reviewing the robot’s electrical-mechanical design and requirements. GMV has established continuous discussions and liaison with partners, providers and ATEX consultants to design an ATEX certifiable robot from the very first moment and establish the best location of all elements in view of the constraints imposed by the oil and gas site to be inspected.

Together with ANR/TOTAL the FOXIRIS team has been making comments on the strict requirements imposed by the ARGOS Challenge. Efforts have concentrated on the detection and analysis of anomalies, ATEX certifiability of all platform components and safe and autonomous robot behavior.
 

The FOXIRIS team has also made a start on the design and development of software modules (mainly tracking, mapping, navigation and sound-pattern recognition). The team has been working with the aid of IDMind’s tank-tread RAPOSA robot to check performance levels of the robot’s control- and remote-operation modules.

The team has now completed the CAD design of the robot’s main body; all internal components have been already selected and orders have been made for external elements. Robot-body manufacturing tasks were carried out in December 2014 and the electrical components are now being phased into the main body over January 2015. By April 2015 FOXIRIS will be ready for the start of the verification and validation phase, to be carried out with a first week of tests in UMAD test plant (Lacq, France).