Project AIROHARSH

Substandard finished product quality and lack of safety measures for humans in complex industrial harsh conditions (IHC) are hindering manufacturing, tunnelling, mining, energy and health care industries, and reduce their productivity, operational efficiency, cost effectiveness, and flexibility. One the other hand the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a financial negative impact for businesses by turning public spaces into harsh environments for a human health. Drones and mobile robots have been identified to play a vital role in providing transformational change and for improving safety and quality in IHC. However, an important part of this transformation is the digitalisation process of bridging the gap between robotic platforms and users in the most efficient way.
In the AIROHARSH project we aim to achieve this transformational change to overcome various technological shortcomings in wireless technologies, wireless sensors, robotics (drones and mobile robots), artificial intelligence (AI) and image analysis. The current bottlenecks of 4G in IHC have been identified and the AIROHARSH project utilises wireless technologies (5G, and edge services) as the enabler by investigating on how 5G solves the bottlenecks. These technologies will act as a backbone in supporting novel AI and image processing technologies on autonomous drones and mobile robots. A fusion of these technologies go hand in hand in achieving autonomous systems and solutions for complex inspection and monitoring tasks. The tools and technologies developed will support depicted IHC use cases in industries such as manufacturing, tunnelling, mining, and energy.
The AIROHARSH project aims to develop technological solutions addresses to the particular use case challenges like (1) the integration of 5G and edge services, and the robotic systems that are connected into IHC to solve current communication bottlenecks, (2) the navigation and positioning difficulties of autonomous drones and mobile robots in IHC, and (3) the up-to-now rather poor problem-solving capabilities of AI and image analysis tools in practical IHC-applications. The use case results of the AIROHARSH project will provide novel solutions, products and services to industries operating in industrial harsh conditions to ensure profitability, safety and quality. From the technological point of view, the results of AIROHARSH will go beyond the state-of-the-art, motivate further research projects, and create new business opportunities to SMEs, large scale technological companies, and research institutes.