Genoese robot against deadly asbestos

Genoa - A robot is not only a powerful tool to increase productivity, reduce operating costs, improve the quality of processes and products. “Robots for us,” says David Corsini, “are instruments at the service of personal safety, rather than productivity.” Born in 1954, Corsini is the founder of Telerobot Labs, a small Genoese robotics company, with a longstanding presence within the Italian Institute of Technology and with over twenty years’ experience in the design and construction of intelligent machines. “Machines,” explains Corsini, “designed for hazardous and hostile environments, that are risky and hard to reach.” Such as buildings contaminated by asbestos, for example.

The design and construction of a robot to remove asbestos from schools, offices and homes is at the core of the Robots to Re-Construction project, funded by the European Union. Within the next 42 months, the EU seeks the creation of a small and smart machine, able to work in any environment for many hours at a time scraping and vacuuming away asbestos, thus avoiding the highly toxic job being performed by a human. The project leader is the French construction giant Bouygues Construction, which has a huge interest in having such a machine built. “France utilized for many years massive amounts of asbestos in construction, also of asbestos in spray form, which in Italy is much less prevalent,” recalls Francesco Becchi, general manager of Telerobot Labs.

Bouygues Construction has entrusted the design and construction of the asbestos removal machine to two robotics companies, Robotnik, based in Valencia, and Telerobot Labs in Genoa. The Robot to Re-Construction machine is just the latest of the many that have been developed by Telerobot Labs, in their small plant on the second floor of a yellow workshop located between Via Albereto and Via Siffredi, in Sestri Ponente.

Other examples are robots for the treatment of nuclear waste, the waste of old decommissioned power stations following the 1986 referendum but also the waste generated each year from research laboratories and nuclear medicine; or robots that inspect pipelines along the seafloor at depths of 2000 metres, and also welding robots. The Robot to Re-Construction will be large, says Becchi, “more or less like a supermarket cart, 80 cm long by 60 wide by 1.80 high. A cart on which a device will be attached which in turn will raise an arm to which a robotic hand with a vacuum cleaner will be mounted, able to scrape away and aspirate the asbestos.”

This is the kind of robots that Corsini prefers, “intelligent machines that work with humans and not just for humans. Machines that perform operations in harsh, tricky environments. Operations that man alone cannot do, but that need to be done.” It’s a challenge in which Corsini has thrived since 1992, when together with a fellow student he created a professional firm that offered solutions to companies. “In a few years the workshop became a small company in the engineering world: Telerobot.” The company grew over time and after a private equity fund joined in 2009, it reached a turnover of about 30 million, with 4 facilities in Italy and a subsidiary in Brazil. Four years later, Corsini parted ways with Telerobot, purchased one of its branches and founded Telerobot Labs. “I had other goals and a different style. Failures are also learning experiences, I learned that lesson in my early sixties.”