10^th Intelligent Maintenance Conference

Industrial systems across land, air, and sea rely on safety-critical assemblies, such as engines, fuel tanks, and pipelines, that require periodic inspection to detect issues before they necessitate costly, unscheduled repairs or service removals. However, performing in-situ maintenance is exceptionally challenging because these components are often crammed into confined, high-complexity environments with limited access. A continuum robot is an ultra-flexible robotic structure that uses internal actuation (like cables or concentric tubes) to achieve continuous, snake-like bending, allowing it to navigate complex, cramped spaces that traditional rigid-joint robots cannot reach. Recently, several academic breakthroughs have successfully transitioned into commercial products. This presentation explores the latest advancements in snake/continuum robotics for an entirely new application: the "healthcare" of industrial systems. I will provide a brief overview of the evolution of continuum robots, followed by the specific research challenges and solutions involved in deploying these systems across the aerospace and nuclear sectors.

As a cornerstone of the Plants of Tomorrow initiative, Holcim is transitioning from localized AI pilots to a continental-scale predictive maintenance ecosystem. While a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) proves an algorithm, scaling to 1,000+ critical assets—including high-torque gearboxes, vertical roller mills (VRMs), and kilns—requires solving the "Industrial AI Paradox": maintaining high precision while managing massive environmental and operational variance across 100+ global sites. This technical presentation breaks down the architecture and deployment of C3 AI Reliability on a global scale. We move beyond theoretical data science to explore the systems engineering required to achieve operational resilience:

Hybrid Edge-to-Cloud Topology: A deep dive into deploying AI on resource-constrained, semi-air-gapped edge devices. We discuss the optimization of Kubernetes clusters at the plant level to ensure real-time inferencing and high availability, even during network latency or outages.

Heterogeneous Asset Modeling: Strategies for managing "Model Drift" across diverse manufacturing environments. We analyze how we leverage "Golden Models" while incorporating unit-specific baselines to account for varying loads, speeds, and ambient clinker temperatures.

Automated Feature Engineering & Signal Processing: How the pipeline automates the transformation of raw high-frequency vibration and thermal telemetry into actionable "Probability of Failure" (PoF) metrics across thousands of concurrent streams.

Closing the Loop with Ground Truth: The technical integration between AI alerts and the Technical Information System (TIS), ensuring that maintenance feedback from the floor directly refines the supervised learning sets for improved precision.

Attendees will leave with a technical blueprint of how Holcim is moving toward a self-healing plant, shifting maintenance from a reactive cost center to a competitive, data-driven weapon in the global building solutions market.