U-ROB, a German drone manufacturer, has developed a drone for industrial applications called ROBi. 

“This includes applications such as the inspection of pipelines and combustion chambers in power plants, the inspection of chimneys and the interior of bridge structures as well as the inspection of tanks and sewage pipes,” says Joseph Metz, founder and managing director of U-ROB GmbH.

Launched into market earlier this year, ROBi is equipped with an exchange mechanism for different sensors and camera systems, which gives the system a high level of flexibility.

“For example: during the interior inspection of a large tank we discover a possibly defective area on a weld seam on the transmission images of the camera. We can now replace the camera system with a system that measures the thickness of the coating or takes a sample, which allows us to tell the customer how serious the damage is,” Metz explains.

Within just a few hours, ROBi can inspect a large tank, which is a far cry shorter than the days of downtime it requires to conduct an inspection using traditional methods.

To perform its duties, ROBi is equipped with an extremely bright RGB camera with a resolution of 12Mpx. Typically, ROBi operates in dark surroundings, so the camera is fitted with dimmable high-power LEDs.

The camera and LEDs are “mounted decoupled from vibrations,” U-ROB explains, and can be turned 180 degrees up and down using a remote control.

“For the majority of the electronic components, we try to work with existing assemblies. But it was with our camera lighting system that we had to develop our own solutions,” Metz says. 

“In the course of the development, these solutions were constantly adapted and optimized. This was done with our development department.”

As a result of packaging density and miniaturization, new LEDs were soldered by hand on the PCB during this process. The connection of the individual payloads and the drone itself was also developed internally, adapted and brought to production.

U-ROB says that the development of a reliable connection was “essential,” since a unique selling point of the ROBi is the possibility of changing payloads. U-ROB used the soldering tools of Ersa, a German manufacturer, for electronic development and production.

“We have been observing the drone market for quite some time and we have noticed that in particular European manufacturers are continuing to specialize,” says Jörg Nolte, product manager Soldering Tools, Rework and Inspection Systems at Ersa GmbH.

“As a result, the demands on quality and the technologies used are increasing, which is caused by the applications themselves and the miniaturization of the components. We seem to have the right manual soldering solutions for the demanding drone manufacturing tasks, because the requests from the drone industry are increasing.”