Project AEROSUB to develop robots for offshore wind O&M

The Horizon Europe supported project AEROSUB has launched to develop robotics solutions to support operations and maintenance of offshore wind farms.

AEROSUB (Automated Inspection Robots for Surface, Aerial and Underwater Substructures), which launched in December 2024, is proposed to revolutionise the operation and maintenance of fixed and floating offshore wind farms with solutions that reduce the operating costs of such infrastructures in extreme environments.

To achieve this goal, the project intends by 2030 to equip several robotic solutions including vehicles operating both underwater and on the surface as well as drones, with AI and data analysis technologies.

"This fully robotic solution will increase the number of annual operating windows of offshore wind farms across Europe by 40%," anticipates Andry Maykol Pinto, Assistant Professor in Engineering at the University of Porto and project coordinator at INESC TEC.

"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.”

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AEROSUB is proposing what it describes as the first fully unmanned robotic solution for both under water and aerial inspection and intervention, with demonstrations planned at two different locations.

These are the test centre in Portugal of the earlier ATLANTIS project, which also was coordinated by INESC TEC, and OceanWinds' WindFloat Atlantic commercial offshore wind farm off the coast of Viana do Castelo in northern Portugal.

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 as it is by the Atlantic Ocean's weather conditions.

The integration between robotics, AI and data analysis has been estimated to have the potential to reduce CO2 emissions from the normal operation and maintenance of wind farms by up to 15Mt through the decrease in the consumption of fossil fuels inherent to the logistics capacity currently used.

It should increase the O&M operational efficiency by 40% and reduce the associated downtime by 60% and the risk exposure of workers by 90%.

The expected cost savings are estimated at €2,400/MW/year ($2,475) leading to a lowering of the levelised cost of electricity of offshore wind energy by about 2.5%.

AEROSUB runs for four years with a total budget of €12 million ($12.4 million).