AEROWIND
The Dutch government aims to establish 75GW offshore wind capacity by 2050. However, the sector faces human and technological challenges, including a shortage of maintenance personnel, limited operational windows due to weather, and complex, costly logistics with minimal error tolerance.
Renewable energy, particularly offshore wind turbines, plays a crucial role in the Netherlands' and EU energy transition strategies under the EU Green Deal. The Dutch government aims to establish 75GW offshore wind capacity by 2050. However, the sector faces human and technological challenges, including a shortage of maintenance personnel, limited operational windows due to weather, and complex, costly logistics with minimal error tolerance.
Cutting-edge robotic technologies, especially intelligent drones, offer solutions to these challenges. Smaller drones have gained prominence through applications identifying, detecting, or applying tools to various issues. Interest is growing in collaborative drones with high adaptability, safety, and cost-effectiveness. The central practical question from network partners and other stakeholders is: “How can we deploy multiple cooperative drones for maintenance of wind turbines, enhancing productivity and supporting a viable business model for related services?”
In collaboration with public and private partners, Saxion, Hanze, and RUG, we will research the development of these collaborative drones and investigate the technology’s potential. The research follows a Design Science Research methodology, emphasizing solution-oriented applied research, iterative development, and rigorous evaluation.
Key technological building blocks
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Morphing drones
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Intelligent mechatronic tools
- Learning-based adaptive interaction controllers and collaborations
To facilitate the sustainable industrial uptake of the developed technologies, appropriate sustainable business models for these technologies and services will be explored. The project will benefit partners by enhancing their operations and business. It will contribute to renewing higher professional education and may lead to the creation of spin-offs/spinouts which bring this innovative technology to the society, reinforcing the Netherlands' position as a leading knowledge economy.
Research questions
Which drone technologies need to be developed to enable collaborative maintenance of offshore wind turbines using multiple smaller drones, and how can an innovative business model be established for these services?
- What are the most important set of user, systems and value creation requirements for multiple smaller drones that can collaboratively carry out a maintenance of offshore wind turbines that requires physical aerial interaction at high altitudes?
- What innovative business model can be created for exploiting the “to be developed innovative collaborative drone- based solution” to create value for stakeholders in the offshore industry?
- How can we design and develop a scalable drone with morphing capabilities to fit to various working environments and be able to exert significant interaction force (>50N) on the environment that is often required for maintenance tasks?
- How can we design and develop an intelligent mechatronic tool (intelligent manipulator) that can be mounted on the drone and used as generic interface to various maintenance tools?
- Which cooperative control algorithms are suitable to enable a group of drones with intelligent mechatronic tools to coordinate their motion and task progress robustly despite external disturbances?
- Which learning-based adaptive physical interaction controller is suitable for enabling multiple drones to carry out physical interaction tasks stable, safely and efficiently?
- How can the different functional/technical capabilities that are developed in this project be seamlessly integrated to create a complete demonstrator that meets a priori formulated requirements?
- How can we effectively share the insights gained and the knowledge developed in this project with the companies and public institutions to ensure that knowledge development continues after the project is concluded?
Project updates
06-03-2026: We kicked off the research project AEROWIND, together with our partners from the industry and academia, with the first consortium meeting, followed by a demo of AeroBlaster, our surface preparation aerial robot.
20-05-2026: We tested our aerial robot Sarax with a live wind turbine in Eemshaven, Netherlands, by the (very windy) North Sea, in a Physical Interaction Experiment (for Inspection and Maintenance tasks). Testing the robot, control and autonomy stack,and getting new insights and lessons from the operational environment.
Involved parties
Our researchers
