TRI Wind Turbine Nacelle Inspection Robot

설명

A wind turbine nacelle is inspected by a technician who has to climb the tower to get there, which sets a hard limit on how often it happens. TRI's answer is to leave a robot inside it permanently, running on a rail through the nacelle and tower. It carries an infrared camera and a high-definition visible-light camera on a rotatable pan-tilt head mounted on an elevating pole, so it can put the lens where a person would have to climb, plus temperature, humidity, vibration, sound, tilt and gas sensors. A built-in microphone gives two-way intercom and broadcast between anyone working in the nacelle and the central control room. It patrols automatically or under manual control with front and rear obstacle avoidance. Power and data run over the sliding contact line the robot hangs from, with 4G, 5G or Wi-Fi as alternatives, and everything lands in a big-data platform that stores the sensor stream in real time. On top sits a digital-twin 3D visualisation in which the robot's current position and the readings at each checkpoint can be seen in the model of the nacelle. The analytics cover temperature monitoring, gauge reading recognition, leak detection, personnel behaviour recognition, environmental recognition for smoke and flame, and abnormal equipment noise, with threshold-based real-time alarms and task modes spanning comprehensive, routine, special and custom patrols.

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