The revolution in the operation and maintenance of offshore wind farms involves robots and Artificial Intelligence - featuring INESC TEC
AEROSUB (Automated Inspection Robots for Surface, Aerial and Underwater Substructures) is the name of the new €12.1M project coordinated by INESC TEC, whose main objective is to revolutionise the operation and maintenance of fixed and floating offshore wind farms. How? Through the development of world-class technological solutions that reduce the operating costs of renewable energy production infrastructures in extreme environments. To achieve this goal, the project will - by 2030 - equip several robotic solutions with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analysis technologies.
30th January 2025
Said robotic solutions include: unmanned vessels capable of transporting different vehicles, namely robotic vehicles operating underwater and on the surface (including drones). The project will optimise interactions between heterogeneous robots, but also robot-human interactions, towards reducing human exposure to hazardous environments.
AEROSUB proposes the first fully unmanned robotic solution for inspection and intervention, with demonstrations in real-world scenarios planned: at offshore wind farms.
"This fully robotic solution will increase the number of annual operating windows of offshore wind farms across Europe by 40%," said Andry Maykol Pinto, INESC TEC researcher who coordinates another European project that aims to ensure European sovereignty in the technologies to support maritime renewable energy production.
And will this project impact society?
The integration between robotics, AI and data analysis has an estimated potential to allow the reduction of CO2 emissions from the normal operation and maintenance of wind farms, up to 15 million tons, since the automation and optimisation of procedures will lead to a significant decrease in the consumption of fossil fuels inherent to the logistics capacity currently used.
"AEROSUB will also increase safety for offshore wind farms’ workers, as it aims to drastically minimise human exposure to extreme environments, characterised by the often-severe conditions at sea," explained Andry Maykol Pinto.
The demonstrations
The project will test said solutions at two different locations: the Test Centre of the European project ATLANTIS, also coordinated by INESC TEC, and a commercial offshore wind farm, OceanWinds' WindFloat Atlantic. The first site will be used to validate robotic and AI technologies, while the second site will be used to demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of robotic solutions in a fully real-world environment - influenced by the Atlantic Ocean's weather conditions.
The challenges
In addition to the challenges already mentioned, namely improving the safety of inspection and maintenance operations at offshore wind infrastructures, to protect workers, there are other issues worth mentioning.
"AEROSUB also seeks to reduce existing technological and regulatory barriers, thus accelerating the adoption of robotics for inspection, maintenance and repair tasks in offshore wind farms, validating the flexibility, adaptability and scalability of technological solutions through real demonstrations throughout Europe," added the researcher.
Increasing the reliability and robustness of the methodologies and capacities for the operation and maintenance of offshore infrastructures will also allow the democratisation of access to service providers.
The researcher mentioned in this news piece is associated with INESC TEC and UP-FEUP