A sister company of Adbri has deployed an autonomous robot dog at its cement plant to boost safety and efficiency and prevent small problems becoming big ones.
US-based Ash Grove Cement, part of Adbri parent company CRH, is conducting a year-long pilot trial of the Boston Dynamics’ robot dog Spot at its cement facility in Washington.
With an 80-hour working week the four-legged robotic dog carries out routine inspections using a 4K camera and laser scanning to detect anomalies so it can alert teams before failures occur.
Plant manager Andy White said workers had to spend a lot of time recording data rather than analysing it, but now Spot does that instead.
“When we come in the mornings, we already have reported generated, so we can proactively fix those issues rather than spending eight hours trying to find them,” Mr White reportedly told Global Cement.
Spot has already detected a failing bearing in rotating equipment which prevented unplanned downtime. And it can measure refractory bricks inside cement kilns, reducing the risk to employees so they don’t have to go into hazardous environments.
Ash Grove Cement said the robot improves site safety and enables real-time monitoring in hot and dusty conditions while it frees up skilled teams for more complex work.
About the author
Desi Corbett
Desi is the Editor of Concrete in Australia, at the helm since December 2013, and our weekly news writer since 2016. Focused on concrete and construction for more than 11 years, her expertise in this field forms part of a journalism career spanning three decades. To get in touch please email desi@corbettcomms.com