Magneto wins award at Sprint Robotics 2019 Rotterdam

Last week, during the Sprint Robotics Conference in Rotterdam, Netherlands, our inspection robot Magneto, won the 1st Place in ‘New Innovative Technology in Inspection Maintenance or Cleaning’.

Magneto has been under development by CSIRO’s Data61 Robotics and Autonomous Systems Group for the last six years. It is amongst the few multi-limbed robots with electromagnetic feet capable of climbing and traversing 3D ferromagnetic surfaces.

Magneto was born when Dr Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay along with his highly skilled team started to investigate a platform that could provide a full-area coverage for inspection of complex industrial structures and confined spaces, especially in spaces which have a very narrow profile and are cluttered by structural elements which make it impossible for an aerial platform to perform a close-range inspection.

This work has been published in a paper called: “Magneto: A Versatile Multi-Limbed Inspection Robot“ at the IROS 2018 Conference, held in Madrid that same year.

Magneto is part of our family of robots called Magnapods, which are highly flexible inspection robots capable of accessing visually occluded pockets, thereby improving inspection coverage and quality over human inspectors.

In an endeavour to further develop Magneto into a commercial application, we are currently under negotiations with Nexxis for them to become a licensee to commercialise Magneto.

Jacob Oestreich, a Mechatronics Engineer in our Robotics Perception team, joined the Nexxis team in Rotterdam to present the platform.

Thank you Sprint Robotics!

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