Pressure vessels are safety critical infrastructure, present across many industries such as oil and gas, nuclear, petrochemical and aerospace. Assuring the safety of these ageing assets is increasingly important, as there have been many fatal failures in the past. This is affected via regular assessments of fitness for service, which are regulated by exacting industry standards. The standards specify that a full volumetric inspection of pressure vessels must be carried out every five years. 20% of pressure vessels in the oil and gas industry cannot be inspected externally and internal inspections require production shutdown. Industry have publicised the need to remove humans from these **dull, dirty, dangerous and demanding** environments. Therefore industry is pushing for non-intrusive robotic inspections Internal inspection has significant cost and health and safety risk associated with it: in order to carry out such inspection, the operator must stop production, depressurise, store extracted fluid, vent , etc. The total cost associated with these activities can easily exceed £1M within a few days. More importantly, these tasks are currently carried out by human operators. It is not possible for humans to carry out inspection on these assets without breaking containment, the only way to do so, is via robotics and artificial intelligence. Providing such solutions is our main motivation. CHIMERA is a semi-autonomous robotic crawler for internal pressure vessel inspection, maintenance and repair. It can be deployed into the pressure vessel without breaking containment via an innovative bolt on headworks. The current version is equipped with sensors for self-localisation, brush for cleaning vessel walls (both in air), ultrasonic inspection system (capable of functioning in water), supplied with AI, which creates corrosion maps and reasoned maintenance and repair plans and a slender arm for visual inspection and repair in aeroengines. The project is coming to an end, with testing and demonstrations of the crawler about to start and the slender arm demonstrations delayed by six months due to COVID-19. It is proposed to develop the next better integrated version of CHIMERA - CHIMERA 2, with both navigation and ultrasonic systems capable of functioning in a vessel half-filled with water and the robotic arm suitable for inspection of aircraft wings too. There are close ties between the consortium and the targeted industries, providing a direct route to market/exploitation. The members propose to exploit them and demonstrate a fully integrated version, CHIMERA 2, to external stakeholders at the end of the new project.

"The Innovate funded Prometheus project will develop a fully autonomous robot capable of geo-technical surveys in unknown voids for use in the mining, water infrastructure monitoring and offshore industries. This robot will be able to be automatically deployed and recovered through a standard restricted access bore of 150mm diameter, significantly increasing potential use cases over existing systems. Key demonstrations will be carried out during the project in conjunction with Network Rail - to explore and map mine workings that extend under existing rail infrastructure. Further, applications are also within the water industry with aging water infrastructure. This is presenting major issues to societies, in terms of leakages, burst water mains, flooding, contamination, etc. This is resulting in significant costs to infrastructure providers in terms of fines, legal fees, and complex repairs. The system itself will be designed, built and tested by a consortium led by Headlight -- an SME working with leading edge sensor and data processing technologies. Partners include Callen-Lenz, an SME with expertise in airborne robotic systems development and deployment. They will work closely with the Universities of Manchester, Royal Holloway and Bristol to integrate the latest sensors, control and manufacturing techniques into a truly novel and highly capable platform. This will include sensors and adaptive sensing software provided by both Thales and Headlight. The joint requirements of fully autonomous operation beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), combined with deployment through a limited access 150-diameter borehole will be demonstrated both in a university lab environment and at key milestone demonstrations in conjunction with Network Rail. This will be an excellent illustration of robotics, autonomy and AI in extreme environments with widespread application. The final system will demonstrate a step change in autonomous capability, highly flexible operation and deployment, meeting a real and existing industrial need for rapid inspection of areas that are difficult to access and complex to navigate."

Pressure vessels are considered safety critical infrastructure and are present across many industries such as oil and gas, nuclear, petrochemical etc. Assuring the safety of these ageing assets is increasingly important for these industries as there have been many fatal failures in the past. Internal pressure vessel inspection has significant cost and health and safety risk associated with it and is required at specific intervals by industry codes/standards. In order to carry out internal inspection, the operator must; stop production, depressurise, store extracted fluid, vent etc. The total cost associated with these activities can easily exceed £1M within a few days depending on the production facility. More importantly, these tasks are currently carried out by humans and the hazardous environments have led to many injuries/fatalities. It is not possible for humans to carry out inspection on these assets without breaking containment, the only way to do so, is via robotics and artificial intelligence. CHIMERA is a semi-autonomous robotic platform for internal pressure vessel inspection, repair and maintenance. It will be deployed into the pressure vessel without breaking containment via an innovative bolt on headworks. It will be equipped with a sludge/sediment vacuum to clean the pressure vessel, an ultrasonic phased array inspection system and a slender arm for inspection and repair in confined spaces. To successfully deliver this, a consortium of experts has been formed with capabilities in robotics, inspection, navigation, in situ repair, AI, civil nuclear and oil and gas. There are close ties between the consortium and the targeted industries, providing a direct route to market/exploitation. CHIMERA represents a clear technological innovation for the UK pressure vessel inspection market with a major growth opportunity for the SME supply chain in the consortium.