Imagine a team of robot drones and underwater subs that work together like a coordinated swarm to check on wind turbines. Instead of sending divers and climbers into dangerous seas, these robots do the dirty work of cleaning and inspecting both above and below the water. It's like having a remote-controlled security and maintenance crew that never gets tired or puts lives at risk.
Offshore wind maintenance is expensive, dangerous for humans, and causes significant downtime. Current methods rely on manual inspections that increase the levelized cost of electricity.
A coordinated fleet of Uncrewed Fleet Carriers, surface vehicles (USV), underwater ROVs, and aerial drones (UAS/UAV) integrated with AI and Digital Twins.
If you are an operator dealing with high maintenance costs and dangerous manual inspections — this project developed a multi-domain robotic fleet that can lower the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) by 2.5%. It reduces worker risk exposure by 90% and cuts downtime by 60%.
If you are a service provider dealing with the inefficiency of manned ROV operations — this project developed an unmanned robotic solution for underwater intervention. This can increase operational efficiency by 40% and reduce the human monitoring burden by 80%.
If you are a firm dealing with the high carbon footprint of vessel-based maintenance — this project developed an automated orchestration of drones and surface vehicles. This approach has the potential to reduce eCO2 emissions of operations by up to 15M tonnes.
Based on available project data, the solution enables cost savings of 2,400€/MW/year.
Yes, the project involves large scale pilots for monitoring, inspection, cleaning, and maintenance in real offshore wind farms.
Based on available project data, specific IP or licensing terms are not provided, but the project develops AI-based features for perception and Digital Twin solutions for data analysis.
The system optimizes human-robot and robot-robot collaboration to reduce the human burden for monitoring by 80%.
The project period runs from 2024-12-01 to 2028-11-30.
The consortium is heavily industry-driven with 11 industrial partners (65% ratio), including 4 SMEs, which suggests a strong focus on commercial viability. With 17 partners across 6 countries (PT, ES, FR, IE, IT, UK), the project combines academic research from 3 universities and 3 research centers with practical industrial application.
Contact INESC TEC in Portugal for technical partnership inquiries.
Contact us to connect with the AEROSUB industrial consortium for pilot opportunities.
