Thrust-vectoring Drone Delivery and Remote Operation of a Wind Turbine Blade Autonomous Repair Manipulator (VECTARM)

该项目展示了一种新型的机器人系统，用于风力涡轮机叶片的自主维护和修理。它涉及到一个自主的，正在申请专利的叶片修复机械臂，与推力矢量飞行无人机平台的集成，形成VECTARM系统。该系统被设计成在风力涡轮机附近发射-在海上风力涡轮机的情况下从船上发射。然后，它会飞起来，并将自己固定在叶片上，在那里进行维护和维修操作，然后飞回发射基地。该项目的高潮是在垂直悬挂的风力涡轮机叶片上进行演示飞行，然后该系统部署其自主臂并执行修复功能。市场对此类系统的需求强劲且不断增长。维修和维护操作目前由绳索进入技术人员执行，这在部署和涡轮机停机时间方面是昂贵的，并且具有非常大的健康和安全风险。预计到2026年，仅在英国，这些操作就将代表11亿英镑的市场，全球市场将达到194亿美元。VECTARM系统是一种成本低得多的IMR解决方案，可将人类从这些极端工作环境中移除，并将涡轮机停机时间降至最低，所有这些都在一个集成系统中，避免了多个机器人平台的互操作（飞行和有效载荷部署，爬行，机器人维修系统），减少各种平台之间协调失败的机会。该项目使该技术的商业化，这将有助于提高整体发电效率？这将有助于降低风能成本，同时为英国确保这一专业知识。

The project demonstrates a novel robotic system for the autonomous maintenance and repair of wind turbine blades. It involves the integration of an autonomous, patent-pending blade repair manipulator arm, with a thrust-vectoring flying drone platform to form the VECTARM system. The system is designed to be launched in the vicinity of the wind turbine - from a boat in the case of offshore wind turbines. It then flies and anchors itself to the blades where it performs the maintenance and repair operations, before flying back to its launch base. The project culminates with a demonstration flight on a vertically-hung wind turbine blade where the system then deploys its autonomous arm and performs repair functions.There is a strong and growing market demand for such a system. Repair and maintenance operations are currently performed by rope-access technicians, which is costly in terms of deployment and turbine downtime, and carries very significant health and safety risks. These operations are forecast to represent a £ 1.1 billion market in the UK alone by 2026, and USD 19.4 billion globally.The VECTARM system is a much lower cost IMR solution that removes humans from these extreme work environments and minimises the turbine downtime, all in a single, integrated system that avoids multiple interoperating robotic platforms (flying and payload deployment, crawling, robotic repair system), reducing the chances of coordination failure among the various platforms.The project enables the commercialisation of the technology, which will contribute to improving the overall generation ef?ciency of offshore wind, helping reduce the cost of wind energy whilst securing this expertise for the UK.