News
12/20/2013

Launching of the ARGOS Challenge: "Autonomous robots for gas & oil production sites"

The French National Research Agency (ANR), in partnership with TOTAL, launches today the ARGOS Challenge. Funded by TOTAL and implemented by ANR, this call aims at fostering the development of advanced robotic capabilities in oil & gas environments. As the outcome of the evaluation process managed by ANR, TOTAL will fund 3 to 5 teams and will make them compete against each other. Deadline for submission of applications: 18 March 2014.

Under its Work Programme 2014, ANR proposes the “Challenge competition” instrument whose goal is to encourage several teams to work on the same topic and to put them into competition with one another.

Funded by the French company TOTAL, the ARGOS Challenge focuses on robotics, and more specifically on advanced robots operating in oil & gas environments. Based on robot systems which can safely operate in complete or supervised autonomy over the entire onshore or offshore production site, potentially in hazardous explosive atmospheres, the overall objective of the challenge is to enhance the safety of operators in isolated production sites.

On behalf of TOTAL, ANR is in charge of the organisation of the call for proposals and the management of the evaluation and selection process. TOTAL will prepare and sign the grant agreements with the selected teams and will organise three successive competitions designed to test different modes of operation.

Selected teams – French or foreign – will receive the same minimum amount of funding of €500 k. Depending on the number of selected teams, TOTAL could increase the funding. At the end of the third edition of the contest, the winning team will receive a bonus of €500 k.

The deadline for the submission of applications is 18 March 2014.

For further information:

Last updated on 21 March 2019
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