Explanation of SHARP Systems

System Health Assessment and Real-Time Prediction

What is SHARP?

System Health Assessment and Real-time Prediction (SHARP) technology is a valuable tool for those tasked with maintaining high cost equipment and machinery in a variety of industries. The goal of this technology is to provide on-line monitoring of system behavior (machine condition) and provide assessment of the operational condition of the equipment to the operator and management in real-time, i.e., assessment based upon current measurements. In addition, the long term goal is to provide management with predictions of the remaining useful "life" of the machine before maintenance activities are required. This will allow management to plan and prepare for the removal of this expensive and critical equipment from service rather than being forced to react to an unscheduled outage, or to pull fully functional equipment from service for scheduled maintenance when it is not really necessary.

In its application to equipment working in hazardous environments, such information will reduce and perhaps eliminate the necessity of human workers from having to enter the more hazardous environment of the remediation site, e.g., dig face or waste tank, to fix equipment failures which occur during operation. To obtain these goals, sensor based measurements technologies are melded to knowledge based systems to record, characterize, and interpret data in an automated fashion; resulting in information which can support continuous and automatic health assessments using intelligent software. This will allow the human operator to focus on the actual remediation operation, without being concerned about the robot's (or other machinery) condition.

Why is SHARP important?

SHARP is important because it can help make projects safer, cheaper, faster:

Safer: SHARP will make operations safer by reducing and hopefully eliminating the need for human workers to enter the waste remediation site directly. With the use of teleoperated technology, workers will be removed from the actual waste remediation activity. However, if the robotic equipment should fail in operation there is considerable chance that workers would be required to enter the site to remove the broken equipment or to repair it in situ. These operations will expose workers to the greatest health and safety risk and therefore should be avoided. SHARP does this by providing management and operations with a real-time assessment of the health condition of the machine. With this information in hand, management and operations can determine that it is appropriate to pull the equipment from the operation to fix a failing system, thus eliminating the need to do the work in the hazardous environment.

Cheaper: SHARP will make EM operations cheaper as well. Because management and operations will have up-to-the-minute knowledge of the system's health state, routine preventive maintenance, which heretofore has been done regardless of actual need, can be postponed when SHARP information indicates that the system does not in fact need that type of care. This can keep the system working longer, with less interruptions, thus leading the a more cost effective operation. As a part of a contract we have with INEL, we have performed a cost-benefit analysis on the use of using predictive maintenance (SHARP) in place of preventive maintenance, for a gantry crane to be used in land fill remediation. This study has shown that over a five year period several hundred thousand dollars (~$400,000) would be saved by using SHARP. We believe these findings are indicative of the types of results that will be found when such analysis is done for other applications.

Faster: This follows from above in that if the system spends more time in the operation, the job will be done faster. In addition, if unanticipated failures are avoided, then the downtime will be kept to a minimum and as a result, completion of operations will arrive sooner. Also, because management is forewarned of part failure, steps can be taken to ensure that replacement parts are on-hand when repair and replacement are scheduled. This means there will be much less downtime waiting on parts.

SHARP can be installed on robots and equipment (e.g., furnace conveyance) which are used for treatment and disposal. Because the operator is located in a operations center, remote from the equipment, the ability to determine the condition of the machinery is significantly reduced. On-line monitoring and condition assessment can help the operator and management to determine the health of the equipment and prevent failures during operation. In addition, having on-line monitoring will help management to understand the performance of the system which could be very important in design of future applications.

In summary, SHARP systems will prove to be important for robots and other equipment used in a wide variety of applications and industries. Preliminary analysis has shown that there will be significant cost-benefit for using this technology in lieu of the more typical preventive maintenance. In addition, it will provide management with valuable on-going system's operation information.

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