BladeBUG Limited

BladeBUG Limited has developed a unique six-legged walking robot that has been designed from the ground up to perform remote detailed inspections and early stage repairs on wind turbine blades.

This project will result in accelerating ultrasonic non-destructive inspections of both on and offshore wind turbine blades, deploying and retrieving the robot without having any rope access technicians going on to a blade.

The scans will be performed via the BladeBUG robot with the data remotely reviewed by a composites NDT expert in real time.

The BladeBUG robot enables defects or damages identified from non-contact visual inspections, from either drones or ground-based camera systems, to perform more detailed contact inspections using non-destructive test methods, i.e.

ultrasonic or lightning protection system inspection.

This provides more information and data to make more informed decisions about what corrective actions and when to proceed with.

The BladeBUG robot has been designed as an agnostic platform with a modular tool bay enabling the functionality of the robot to be easily and quickly changed from an inspection device to a repair device.

This capability enables early stages of damages to be repaired via the robot, preventing them escalating into more serious and expensive repairs.