The offshore wind turbine blade cuts through the air as a drone follows its rotation. Today, not only the turbine is at work. The drone is equipped with a thermal camera that photographs the blades beneath the surface and transmits the images to an artificial intelligence model.
"With this solution, we can detect potential damage beneath the surface," explains Associate Professor Xiao Chen, who is heading up the development work at DTU Wind.
He came up with the idea for the system, known as AQUADA, in 2020 while testing wind turbine blades:
"I wondered why there wasn't a smarter way of testing. A medical journal described how tumours in the body are detected using thermography. So, I thought: why not try using a thermal camera to identify cracks beneath the surface of the blades?"
