Over the past week, scientists at Orca (Offshore Robotics for Certification Assets) in Scotland have finished the development of new autonomous drones and robots that will change the way traditional work is done in the energy industry. The first development is a drone that is completely autonomous and and had the ability to repair wind farms. The drone attaches itself to the turbine and has a robotic arm that can do everything from simply inspecting the turbine to actually repairing it. With no human controlling the drone on land, the process of repairing wind turbines becomes more efficient and more safe, as no human has to dangle above an ocean below in order to repair a wind turbine.
The second development to come this week is a robot that looks almost like a dog. This robot is capable of floating or sinking below water and autonomously sending itself to an offshore energy site and carrying out repairs on its own. This is beneficial because most offshore energy sites are very small and hard for humans to actually move around in them. This robot facilitates the process of repairing offshore energy sites and has the ability to get to hard to reach places that would be difficult for humans. Although all of these robots are autonomous, and through artificial intelligence will learn to carry out repairs on their own, there will still be some degree of human supervision to make sure the robot is doing the job correctly. The main objective of these developments is to take humans out of harms way, as some of these traditional repair jobs are very dangerous.