CAMELOT (structural model corroboration toolbox) – STRUCTURAL DIAGNOSIS SOLUTIONS

Commonly, the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of large structures and infrastructures can be carried out following a “time-based” (TB) or “condition-based” (CB) approach. In the first, maintenance is prescribed at regular intervals over time. In the second, it is the condition of the structure or the appearance of suspicious symptoms that determine the need for maintenance. Very often, however, the symptom is recognized when the actions necessary for its treatment are very expensive. As for large bridges, protocols more frequently envisage a TB approach to monitoring and a visual CB approach. This means that monitoring and maintenance activities are approximately prescribed every 3 months, extraordinary inspections every 12 months and more invasive tasks (such as destructive tests on samples extracted from the structure) only when needed. By continuously monitoring a structure, instead, it is possible to extract objective parameters, which, if analyzed and compared over time, can help in the early detection of some problems that neither a TB approach nor a visual CB approach can provide. Furthermore, in cases where the monitoring follows a CB approach guided by objective data, the data usually comes from sensors installed relying on the experience gained by specialized technicians in the sector, and not resorting to interactive optimization processes between technicians, monitored structure and virtualizations of the same that maximize the amount of information that can be extracted from the structure for the subsequent diagnosis phase.

CAMELOT is a solution that consists of 2 services and 1 product that allows the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of large structures/infrastructures even with a limited number of resources, adapting to the system to be monitored.

In a hypothetical scenario, the customer can acquire the first service (patent deposited) to create an experimental setup, adapted on the structure, and obtained by optimizing the resources at his disposal (e.g., number of sensors). In this way, data with a high information content will be recorded, reducing the waste of money and computational memory. To succeed in this, CAMELOT rely on an integrated software-hardware system, where a sensor (currently at a prototype level) helps us in the setup optimization phase.

Subsequently the same customer uses the product (a software) to evaluate the structural health of the building or the structure/infrastructure of interest. To reduce the number of false positives and false negatives, the software uses advanced Machine Learning algorithms that recognize and separate the physiological fluctuations present in the recorded data from the pathological ones. If, according to the software, there are pathological conditions, the customer can request the use of the second service with which a digital twin of the monitored structure is created. Through virtual tests on the digital twin, we therefore try to understand in more detail what is the nature of the pathology that is affecting the structure, in order to support subsequent “decision making” phases on maintenance and rehabilitation of the work.

Right now (year -4), the development and marketing of CAMELOT requires further actions and investments, including, in chronological order:

• Definition of a preliminary Business Plan (year -3)
• Fund search – 150K € (year -2)
• Blindly testing the technology with users outside the team for optimization of the system proposed by CAMELOT – TRL 5
• Blindly testing the technology with users outside the team for debugging – TRL 6
• Fund search – 150K € (year -1)
• Beta release of the technology (limited functionality) – TRL 7
• Definition of a definitive and time varying Business Plan
• Fund search – € 300K (year 0)
• Release of the stable version of CAMELOT: first 10 units – TRL 8
• Continuous updating of CAMELOT and R&D – TRL 9
• Break-even point (year 2)
• Reaching 400 units (year 5)