(185a) Accelerated Adoption of Disruptive Robotic Technologies through Targeted Roadmapping and Communities of Practice

The SPRINT Robotics Collaborative is a consortia of end users and their supporting technology providers working together to address the most urgent needs by leveraging state of the art technology. These rapid advanced in robotics and information and communications technologies have the potential to revolutionize the way maintenance, inspection, and non-destructive testing within our industry is performed. This would make facility operation safer by reducing exposure of personnel to hazardous environments and is likely to introduce more reliable inspection and maintenance or operations routines. In addition, introduction of these technologies can provide significant economic benefits for the industry, mainly through reduction of plant down time and increased asset life. Despite these obvious advantages, industry acceptance of these new technologies is likely to be slow. Causes of slow industry adoption of new robotic technologies will be shared in a novel approach for significant speed-up of market adoption through end-user led collaboration across the value chain. In short, the ‘Robotics Roadmap’ sets dots on the horizon and sketches the way to get to these landmarks, aligning the industry on goals and priorities.