R&D 100 winner of the day: (Continuously) Rotating Wind Turbine UAV Inspection System

The (Continuously) Rotating Wind Turbine UAV Inspection System, from Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC), replaces the existing procedure of implementing the wind turbine examination after the blades stop running. The new method not only redefines the logic to examine the wind turbine blades with the existing UAV, but also recreates the formation mode of the UAV during large-scale inspections.  It can rapidly converge the displacement to zero, thus maintaining high stability of flight attitude. This new technology can effectively finish the damage inspection on a normally running wind turbine. Shortening the time of inspection by inspecting and deploying the control system from the ground station, the operator can control the UAV installed image sensor. The sensor starts detecting at the central hub and captures images of damaged blades, gradually moving outward. The time to complete the inspection on one wind turbine is shortened from 25 minutes to 5 minutes. When the wind field strengthens, the blade rotation increases actively increasing the scope of the image sensor, thus shortening the time of inspection furthermore.