Autonomous Wind-Turbine Blade Tracking Using A Dual-Camera System

Inspection is an increasingly critical process in the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) of an offshore wind turbine. The quality and fidelity of the data acquired during inspections has profound downstream consequences on decisions such as how to operate and when to repair the wind turbine. The acquisition of high-quality data has become a focal point of wind turbine O&M and forms the thrust of this work. We have developed an image acquisition system capable of pointing a camera with enough precision and stability to reliably acquire an entire blade surface over the course of an inspection. Doing this offshore without the possibility for remote control requires that we develop a targeting system tolerant to the communication lag associated with offshore vessels. Lack of cellular coverage and the cost of direct satellite communication requires the need of an intelligent targeting system capable of data acquisition without direct human control over long missions for many turbines.