International Climbing Machines, (ICM) of Ithaca New York has entered into a commercial agreement with NDIC of Japan. NDIC is one of the largest providers of Non-Destructive Inspections in Japan, employing approximately 1,500 people. A great deal of Japan infrastructure is composed of concrete, from building construction to large spans of highway. Regular testing of these large concrete structures is part of the periodic field testing conducted in part due to the high frequency of earthquakes and other natural disturbances.
Credit: ICM Robot
Credit: ICM Robot
To date these tests were conducted manually. The ICM climbing robots are viewed as the future for field inspections. NDIC has committed considerable resources to the development of many markets where ICM robots make economic and safety sense. Various highway and industrial field testing scenarios are being pursued with the ICM climbing robot is the remote controlled delivery vehicle upon which various cameras and non-destructive sensors will be integrated. “Japan has embraced ICM robots with great enthusiasm. Not only are there ICM robots in Japan now, there is substantial interest by some very large international companies in the adoption of ICM robots to conduct work that up to this point has been performed by humans on scaffolding ladders or lifts, exposing workers to high risk, injury, and even death. ICM robots remove this threat to workers and should save a great deal of time and money. Just eliminating the costs and time to set up and take down scaffolding is viewed as a strong incentive to utilized ICM climbing robots instead of the conventional approach,” explains Sam Maggio, president of ICM. “We view Japan as a major market for our climbing robots.” ICM makes small, robust, remote-controlled robots that can climb virtually any surface. They are held by vacuum force and have high payload capability, able to deploy cameras, tools, and Non-Destructive sensors that conventionally had to be deployed manually with workers. Some uses for the ICM robots include inspection of concrete structures, tanks and buildings. ICM has also integrated tools such as saws, grinders, sandblasters, paint sprayers and Lasers onto its robots.
