Project description
Inspecting infrastructure with climate-friendly drones
There are some 5.3 million kilometres of power lines in the EU, all of which need to be inspected on a regular basis. Many of those check-ups take place using greenhouse-gas-emitting helicopters. The EU-funded THRUST project aims to devise greener monitoring devices, creating a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with LiDAR, visible light and thermal cameras. The new drones will inspect up to 300 km of lines daily and use machine learning to find faults in the grid. The project will also encourage more women to work in aviation. Researchers estimate that if fully realised, replacing helicopters and inspection crews could save 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 annually in the EU.
Objective
In EU alone total length of overhead electricity lines reaches staggering 5.3 million km. That is more than 5 million km of potential fail points, that need to be inspected and maintained in order to ensure the reliability of electricity supply. Currently, these inspections are carried out by helicopters or walking inspection crews. However, the walking crews are slow and inefficient, while helicopters are expensive and damaging our climate (helicopters consume 60 liters of fuel per hour).
Our solution – substituting helicopters and walking crews with our new generation unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with LiDAR , RGB and thermal cameras, combined with machine learning (ML) powered analytics, that can quickly and accurately identify defects and faults in electricity grid elements. Our team have developed a drone, capable to carry combination of sensors at the same time, designed to fly slow and at low altitude for higher data quality and inspecting up to 300 km per day. THRUST drones are capable to fully substitute walking inspector crew and helicopters for infrastructure inspections at a fraction of a cost. Furthermore, our drones emit 171 times less CO2 per km than helicopters, and 10 times less than cars. Our drones have potential to cut EU CO2 emissions by 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 annually.
With the help Women TechEU we will prepare for the next fundraising round, expand our innovation partner network and launch a media campaign to encourage more women to join aviation industry. This project objective is to position our company to be the catalyst for higher women involvement in aviation industry, through leading by example, as well as increasing THRUST scalability to become leading deep-tech start-up in drone-based infrastructure inspections.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering sensors optical sensors
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering robotics autonomous robots drones
- engineering and technology mechanical engineering vehicle engineering aerospace engineering aircraft rotorcraft
- natural sciences chemical sciences catalysis
- engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.3.2 - European innovation ecosystems
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-CSA - HORIZON Coordination and Support Actions
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-EIE-2021-SCALEUP-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
11351 Vilnius
Lithuania
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.