Waygate Technologies Robotics is a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) set up as a joint venture between GE (Switzerland) GmbH and ETHZ. GEIR provides operators of large-scale industrial facilities such as power plants and refineries with tailored mobile inspection robots enabling them to minimize outages and maintenance times, and enhance environmental and workplace safety. GEIR was founded in late 2006 and has started operation in January 2007. The company, having 32 employees (2017-02), is continuously growing with the industrialization, production and deployment of ETHZ/EPFL and GE research results.
More than 100 systems are out in the field spread all over the world. Remote inspection is one of the main goals of GEIR. In particular, based on the EU Project AIRobots, a flying boiler inspection system is in final industrialization and for AEROARMS, a highly mobile remote controlled magnetic crawler is
developed.
Relevant skills
Waygate Technologies Robotics is the prime mover in the field of robotic inspection based on autonomous mobile robotic systems and has secured its position by patenting the strategic technology in the field of power generating industry, oil & gas up-/mid-/downstream facilities and maritime industry. GEIR has started to use flying inspections systems for the visual inspection of oil-/gas facilities and is project partner in the EU Projects AIRrobots, AEROWORKS, ARCAS and AEROARMS.
Role in the project and main tasks
GEIR provides inspection robotic systems to service operators in various industries. Hence the role in ROBINS is the role of a system provider and integrator. As GEIR has a deep knowledge of inspection and maintenance procedures and requirements GEIR is involved in the System Specification (WP1) and the development of the robotic crawler including its local navigation and the NDT integration (WP5). GEIR will support the integration into the overall control
and SW structure (WP6) and the overall tests (WP7).