The robot archaeologist arrives in Pompeii: his name is Ringhio. Here's what it will be used for

“To monitor the Park’s archaeological structures and to detect their anomalies, defects, and damages that become apparent between inspection intervals”: this is the purpose of the four-wheel-drive robot that the Pompeii Archaeological Park has put on track thanks to the collaboration of the Italian Institute of Technology, which provided the vehicle, called "Ringhio.“ Like the space modules that land Mars gods on Mars in search of stones and elements that make the unknown planet known, so Ringhio will act autonomously on the streets of the domus to search, interpret, report situations of interest and crisis that need to be reported to the ”base" for intervention. Only, in this case, instead of looking to the future we will go to investigate and above all guard the past: the extent and multiplicity of situations requires a continuous presence.

In fact, we are talking about 66 hectares, about 50 of which are excavated, with civil and private buildings, monuments, sculptures, paintings and mosaics that need to be monitored also with the help of new technologies as was done last year with drones from above and with another robot, shaped like a dog. Ringhio is a prototype rover of limited size capable of “navigating” through the streets and inside the domus of Pompeii, even in ravines and steep situations, and the excavation campaign is also a field test for the IIT, which thus tests the various functionalities of the little robot in aid of humans. The scientific managers for IIT are Ferdinando Cannella, coordinator of IIT’s Industrial Robotics Facility, and Arianna Traviglia, coordinator of the CCHT center, who together with Park officials are following this experimental campaign.

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This is theevolution of a project initially conceived for monitoring the San Giorgio Bridge in Genoa, but the multidisciplinary nature of the Italian Institute of Technology’s research has led to the development of a robot useful for both present and past infrastructure. With Ringhio, the Park will have a subject that can carry out an inspection autonomously to check the state of integrity and preservation, which is important for safety and preservation reasons in the case of cultural heritage.

The eyes and sensors can then over time store data and thus create a database of the monitoring of potentially critical places and situations or the evolution of any damage in order to plan the best maintenance intervention in terms of timing and mode.

The robot is both autonomous and tele-guided, reaches a speed of 10 kilometers per hour, weighs 40 kilograms, and has high-resolution cameras balanced by an active and passive system to compensate for oscillations and vibrations due to uneven terrain. An extra help to discover Pompeii.

The robot archaeologist arrives in Pompeii: his name is Ringhio. Here's what it will be used for

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