Drone Swarm for Unmanned Inspection of Wind Turbines (Dr-SUIT): Battery Health Management, Hybrid Comms Systems and Operational Platform for Autonomous Offshore Windfarm Inspection

用于风力涡轮机无人检查的无人机群 (Dr-SUIT)：电池健康管理、混合通信系统和自主海上风电场检查操作平台

• 批准号: 75238
• 金额: $ 148.76万
• 依托单位: AIRBORNE ROBOTICS LIMITED
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=75238
• 关键词: Drone; Swarm; Unmanned; Inspection; Wind; Drone; Swarm; Unmanned; Inspection; Wind

Airborne Robotics (AR), Ocean Infinity (Ocean) and Bentley Telecom (Bentley) are working in partnership with the University of Portsmouth (UoP) to develop drone swarming capabilities and an operational platform for an autonomous inspection in offshore windfarms (OWF). Utilising a system-of-systems approach, the project entitled “Dr-Suit”, focuses to build in drone swarm resilience and safety especially when facing the challenges including access and environment hazards, increased Operations and Maintenance (O&M) costs, and drones’ battery life limitation. Although drones have been used for WT inspection, a drone swarm deployment offers benefits of larger/further coverage and reduced inspection time. Since drones are currently not designed for swarm operation at a standard use, Dr-SUIT will develop an algorithm to interplay, therefore progressively shift the design from a single pilot controlling a drone to a single pilot controlling multiple drones, optimised by the hybrid communication system (4G, 5G, satellite) integration. The 5G network will reduce the latency and increased bandwidth size and speed. The utilisation of satellite communications extends the coverage to the communication industries and cost-effective backhaul services. The hybrid system will address issues of latency, redundancy, and bandwidth size for detection’s continuous/big data relay, thus enhancing drone-to-drone, drone-to-operator and sensing performance during swarming operation. Battery life is another issue when calculating power and flight time required for an entire operation (accounting flying to above ~200m turbines and inspecting ~70-90m long blades). A novel swarm-aware battery health management system with predictive analytics will be developed along with a battery recharging/swapping system which is needed for more realistic drone swarming missions. A barge with a small power unit will be utilised as a platform for drones to recharge/swap batteries, for a timely operation, and for a 5G mast and satellite. Essential to the swarm safe operation, a real time inspection scheduling and routing will be mathematically modelled factoring drone’s performances, turbine positions, and environment. A live demonstration of an optimised drone swarm deployment performing blades inspection will conclude this Phase 2 project.

机载机器人技术（AR），海洋无限（海洋）和本特利电信（Bentley）（Bentley）正在与朴次茅斯大学（UOP）合作开发无人机蜂拥而至的能力，并建立在海上Windfarms（OWF）进行自动检查的操作平台。该项目利用系统的方法“ Dr-Suit”，重点是建立无人机群的弹性和安全性，尤其是在面对挑战时，包括访问和环境危害，增加的操作和维护（O＆M）成本以及无人机的电池寿命限制。尽管已经使用无人机进行了WT检查，但无人机群部署可提供更大/进一步覆盖的好处和减少检查时间。由于目前尚未用于标准用途的群体操作设计，因此DR-Suit将开发一种算法来相互作用，因此逐渐将设计从控制无人机的单个飞行员转变为控制多个无人机的单个飞行员，该飞行员通过混合通信系统（4G，5G，5G，卫星）进行了优化。 5G网络将降低潜伏期，并增加带宽的大小和速度。卫星通信的利用将覆盖范围扩展到通信行业和具有成本效益的回程服务。混合系统将解决检测连续/大数据继电器的延迟，冗余和带宽大小的问题，从而增强无人机到无人机，无人机到操作员以及在群群操作过程中的传感性能。当计算整个操作所需的功率和飞行时间时，电池寿命是另一个问题（核算涡轮机高于约200m的涡轮机并检查约70-90m长的刀片）。将开发一个具有预测分析的新型群蜂群的电池健康管理系统，并将与电池充电/交换系统一起开发，这是更逼真的无人机蜂拥而至的任务所需的。一个带有小动力单元的驳船将被用作无人机的平台，用于及时操作，以及5G桅杆和卫星。对于群体安全操作至关重要的是，实时检查计划和路由将是数学建模的，分解了无人机的性能，涡轮机位置和环境。实时演示了优化的无人机群部署执行刀片检查的现场演示将包括该阶段2项目。