Consortium:

University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering & Computing, Helvetis SA

Project Hashtags:

#AeroWind

Watch the experiment’s video here.

Overview

Development of an autonomous visual inspection system, implying Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which will enable inspection of wind turbine blades without requiring stopping the turbine and therefore interrupting energy production. Existing visual inspection methods are rather slow, inaccurate, costly and require complex coordination and logistics between UAV operators, turbine operators and in case of offshore environment also marine coordination centers. It is expected that decreasing losses in electricity production and income would have a huge impact on green energy production. Technical Proposal: Blade following by surface extraction from point cloud using a custom-built UAV equipped with a Velodyne VLP-16 LiDAR, Pixhawk, Intel NUC and ROS. Blade capture module with laser triggering mechanism and high-speed-high-resolution camera.