The Norwegian oil and gas company Aker BP is officially deploying the Boston Dynamics Spot robot on Tuesday, February 11, 2020. The quadruped will be installed on an oil platform in the North Sea. He will have to carry out inspections, detect oil leaks, collect data to produce reports and thus help in decision-making.
Make offshore operations more efficient and secure
The goal for Aker BP is to make offshore operations more efficient and safer. “These things never get tired, they have great adaptability and data collection“said Kjetel Digre, senior vice president of operations at Aker BP, when asked by Bloomberg.
This announcement is part of a larger partnership between Aker BP and the Norwegian company Cognite, a software publisher specializing in the industry. Together, they plan to carry out a number of tests using robots and drones on the offshore installation, such as leak detection, marine and aerial inspections … Spot (of which only one will be deployed) is part robots that will participate in this program. “We are delighted to see innovative partners confirm Spot’s ability to reduce risk to humans and deliver value for the energy industry “, said Michael Perry, vice president of business development at Boston Dynamics.
THE SDK AVAILABLE TO ALL VIA GITHUB
At the end of September 2019, Boston Dynamics announced that it was offering Spot for rent to companies who wanted to test it and develop its skills. A further step was taken in January 2020 when the US robotics company announced that the Quadruped Software Development Kit (SDK) was available to everyone through GitHub. An opportunity for developers to create “custom applications that allow Spot to perform useful tasks for a wide variety of industries“, declared on this occasion Michael Perry.
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