It started with a dream of DC Sekhar before twenty five years. As a senior office on merchant oil tankers, he led the team to inspect and clean crude oil tanks of the ship. He was the first person to enter, verify that the gas atmosphere was safe inside the tank for men to enter. The tank cleaning was manual then and is so even now. He had resolved then to bring in machines to do that, rightly believing that in this day and age, lifting sludge by buckets manually is not the way to do it.

Cut to 2020. Armed with support from M/s Oil India Ltd and Incubated at IIT Guwahati, he is developing robots for cleaning crude oil tanks in tank farms of oil industry.
It is interesting how human ingenuity can deal with complex problems and conceive solutions. The application here was for a robot to enter very hazardous and explosive zone and work within the restrictions of the heating coils inside. The design brief was clear – think like a wrist watch designer. Every inch of space in the robot must be justified and utilised to make it very compact. This was to enable the robot to pass under the heating coils all over the tank. The existing models under development in Europe were large.  The other design brief was to work with hydraulics, and avoid electricals and electronics.

The team was small but powerful. Seenivasan, a mechanical engineer had dug his teeth deep in fabrication processes on the shop floor.  He had also learnt design software for drawings. This was a rare combination and very useful for design development. The fabrication fitters were experienced in their part of the job. The factory was located in Peenya, an industrial estate in Bengaluru. It was very convenient since all spares and outfittings were available within this estate.

One development led to other with many design iterations on the way. The concept solution once successful led to further ambitious value add accessories like device clean up washing system and a tail hose that neatly packed all hoses within it. After all our operational features were superior to the European machines who were themselves in early development stage. The accessories must also reflect our ability to think through a world class product with all the accessories.
 As a sweetener, our technology was covered by OTT channel os Indian Science Channel of DST, GOI. Many suggestions have come in to adapt this for sewerage systems and similar applications.  In the pipeline and prototyped was a robot to clean retail tanks i.e neighborhood petrol bunk tanks. But we were clear. The adaptations for other applications will start after our main products i.e crude sludge clean up system was commissioned.

Covid hit our productivity hard. Supply chains were disrupted, shut downs were announced and no one could specify any timeline for supply or delivery.  However by this time, out main robotic actions were tested and proven. We knew it was a matter of time before our dreams came true. As we stand the product is complete and undergoing safety assessments and patent processing.