Rockwell and TotalEnergies Form RSS Partnership

Rockwell and TotalEnergies Collaborate on RSS One of the world's largest companies in industrial automation and digital transformation, Rockwell Automation, Inc., has announced a collaboration with TotalEnergies, a global multi-energy company planning to implement a robotic fleet management system for autonomous operations on offshore platforms. The long-term project will reach a significant milestone with the first test on an offshore asset planned for mid-2023. Autonomous operations have long attracted the interest of the oil and gas sector due to the challenging working conditions of offshore operations. Energy companies are investing in robotics to enable long-duration unmanned operations at these facilities, prevent workers from exposure to hazardous situations, enhance safety, attract young talent interested in new technologies, and further reduce CAPEX and OPEX. Matt Graves, General Manager of Kalypso, a Rockwell Automation company, stated: "Due to the remote and often challenging environments in which oil and gas companies operate offshore, we have a strategic objective to minimize worker exposure on these platforms. Over the years, this has been achieved through design improvements and equipment automation. However, there are still tasks that must be performed manually and require operator observation. TotalEnergies has been researching the use of ground robots for five years. After taking on some of these manual tasks, the next step was to develop a control system that would operate these robots remotely. For this reason, they came together with Kalypso." TotalEnergies continues its efforts with Kalypso and other partners to implement the Robotic Supervision System (RSS). This will enable operators located in an onshore control room to remotely monitor and coordinate robots using IoT technology, and allow autonomous execution of various activities from routine inspection, operations and maintenance tasks to emergency response that field operators would conduct at conventional facilities. Source