This week we held a final meeting for the Smart UTX project with our partners from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Zagreb (FER) and Apsolon. The Smart UTX project started in 2018 and its goal is to develop a smart modular ultrasound diagnostic system for implementation in extreme working conditions, especially in nuclear power plants. Apart from that, the general goal is to increase innovation competitiveness in the field of industrial ultrasound diagnostics in Croatia.
Inspection of power plants is usually conducted in working conditions that are suitable for humans, for example during a nuclear power plant outage. However, the SMART UTX system can conduct ultrasound inspection of a power plant while it is working. This new system is composed of innovative ultrasound probes resistant to extreme conditions (high temperature, elevated levels of ionizing radiation), modified electronics and machine learning and automatic defect recognition algorithms.
Apart from the successful development of the system, two doctoral dissertations resulted from the Smart UTX project. Colleagues Duje Medak and Luka Posilović achieved excellent academic results with their work on the project. We are grateful to all project participants for their hard work. There are still some closing activities ahead of us following yesterday’s meeting when we exchanged some opinions and thoughts on the Smart UTX system implementation and commercialization. The project was co-financed by the European Union from the European Regional Development Fund as part of the Operational Programme Competitiveness and Cohesion 2014 - 2020.