COMMERCIALIZATION OF AERIAL TOOLS APS (CAT)

Project Information

AT

Grant agreement ID: 101114390

DOI

10.3030/101114390

Project closed

EC signature date 2 June 2023

Start date 1 July 2023

End date 30 June 2024

Funded under

• European innovation ecosystems

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 75 000,00

Coordinated by

AERIAL TOOLS APS
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AT (COMMERCIALIZATION OF AERIAL TOOLS APS (CAT))

Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2024-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

One of the most pressing needs of the European Union is the green energy transition. By 2030, 15% of the global energy production will come from solar sector, the total production will increase from 0.7 TW in 2020 to 8 TW in 2030. Therefore, energy companies are under pressure to build the necessary infrastructure at a very high pace. They need to keep infrastructure maintenance and operation cost as low as possible. While solar farms require periodic inspections, solar owners and operators are looking for robotic solutions to optimize inspection and maintenance processes. However, their inspections remain outdated, inefficient and expensive. This is because inspections are still done manually, which is time consuming. Conventional drones used by inspection companies can only inspect up to 5-15 MW /day. Thus, large infrastructure with an average of more than 200MW being built today cannot be efficiently inspected by drones. Due to the large size, some companies are testing airplane inspection but they are expensive, pollutant and less precise.

We offer and end to end service for aerial inspection of large infrastructure. We perform the inspection, process the data and delivery the analysis through a digital platform. We are using an in-house Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) drone which covers up to 50 times more area than conventional off the shelf solutions, while our patented payload interface unit can collect data more efficiently and precisely. We use AI to perform autonomous identification and positioning of anomalies to create a maintenance report, following standards. The increase in efficiency of flights and data handling will have a great impact on the energy generated (+1%), increasing customer profits (saving 250,000 €/GW/Inspection) while reducing CO2 emissions (~45 k tn CO2 eq/GW/Inspection). Finally, we provide the report and a virtual tween of the park through a digital platform where customers can manage their assets.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the project, we have greatly advance in the development of our solution. We performed a pilot project on summer 2023 where we surveyed several solar parks, testing our flying protocols and data acquisition. In a foam prototype, we have integrated the main circuit components including thermal and digital cameras, gimbal and onboard computer. We have also improved control systems, testing transition from hovering to forward flight as well as data acquisition quality at high speeds. We have achieved high accuracy in positioning of anomalies by integrating an RTK antenna and synchronizing camera, onboard computer and autopilot. Furthermore, we are developing a software to improve autonomous navigation based on computer vision which will improve data acquisition in large and remote parks. Furthermore, we have trained and tested a deep learning solution to identify and position anomalies to generate an automatic report, the successful georeferencing of the anomalies allow us to create the digital tween. Currently, we are developing the digital platform and we expect to released to get customer feedback before the end of 2024.

With the achievement of data acquisition at high speeds in the prototype and the release of the digital platform we are able to offer customers a commercial MPV solution which will been launch during 2024. In parallel with the development of the MVP, we have expanded the IPR protection of the payload interface unit and it is now protected in USA, Brazil, India and Europe. Furthermore, we have continued the integration of the circuit and the patented payload in a carbon fibre structure where we further assets aerodynamics with wind tunnel assessment and improve the drive system, we expect to start test flight before the end of 2024.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We have done a deep market research and competitor analysis, we have found the relevant KPIs that solar parks owners and developers prioritize in order to validate our value proposition. We have seen that there is a gap for large infrastructure maintenance and higher degree of automation in inspections. In that sense, we have certified a willingness for customer to acquired our product and collaborate for further product development, proposals are currently being discussed and we expect to achieve the first sale before the end of 2024. In this way, we are testing our sale process, gaining control over the main metrics such as principal channels, hitting rate, pricing model and expected revenue. With our solution for solar park, we intent to be a sustainable company by 2026.

Currently, our main efforts are into polishing the MVP solution regarding the digital platform and flight protocols. We are including customer feedback in our value proposition to have a deeper market penetration. Then, we need to perform flight test with our in-house carbon fiber VTOL structure, the Onyx V.0 to achieve the full specification we are promising. After that, we will initiate the scalability process with short production run to cover with customer demands. In order to scale, both geographically but also move into other markets such as agriculture, we need private funding. We are also working on a second patent and we intend to submit it before the end of 2024.

Founder team during an inspection

View of the drone during an inspection

Capturing data in a solar park inspection

View of the drone during an inspection