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

该项目展示了一种用于风力涡轮机叶片自主维护和维修的新型机器人系统。它涉及到一个自主的、正在申请专利的叶片修复机械手手臂与一个推力矢量飞行无人机平台的集成，以形成VECTARM系统。该系统被设计为在风力涡轮机附近发射--如果是海上风力涡轮机，则从船上发射。然后，它将自己飞行并锚定到叶片上，在那里执行维护和维修操作，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，然后系统部署其自主臂并执行维修功能。对这种系统的市场需求强劲且不断增长。维修和维护作业目前由绳索技术人员执行，这在部署和涡轮机停机方面代价高昂，并存在非常严重的健康和安全风险。预计到2026年，仅在英国，这些业务就将代表11亿GB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，它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，所有这些都在一个单一的集成系统中，该系统避免了多个互操作机器人平台(飞行和有效载荷部署、爬行、机器人维修系统)，降低了不同平台之间协调失败的可能性。该项目实现了技术的商业化，这将有助于提高海上风能的整体发电效率，帮助降低风能成本，同时确保英国获得这一专业知识。

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.