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About the Project

Funded by Horizon Europe, AEROSUB is an innovative project developing cutting-edge robotic solutions for offshore wind farm operations and maintenance (O&M). By integrating advanced AI, digital twin (DT) technology, and multi-robot collaboration, AEROSUB aims to enhance the efficiency, safety, and sustainability of offshore wind energy production.

The project will demonstrate the first fully unmanned robotic solution for aerial and underwater inspection and intervention, reducing operational costs and environmental impact while increasing offshore wind farm accessibility and longevity.

Key Objectives

1

Enhanced Robotics Capabilities

Demonstrate the effectiveness of unmanned robotic solutions in real offshore wind farm conditions, increasing O&M efficiency by 40% and reducing downtime by 60%.

2

Integrated Robotic
O&M Services

Develop AI-powered aerial, surface, and underwater robotic systems for cost-effective and scalable maintenance, reducing time for specific tasks by 60%.

3

Optimised Digital Twin
& AI Analytics

Implement a digital twin framework for remote monitoring and decision-making, cutting operational costs by 40% and reducing human cognitive workload by 80%.

4

Regulatory &
Market Uptake

Promote the adoption of robotics in offshore wind O&M through certification frameworks, training programmes, and standardisation efforts to ensure compliance and industry-wide acceptance.

5

Increased Accessibility
& Safety

Improve site accessibility by 40% and reduce human exposure to dangerous environments by 90%, contributing to a zero-fatality target for offshore maintenance operations by 2030.

6

Environmental &
Sustainability Impact

Reduce greenhouse gas emissions from O&M operations by up to 7 million tonnes of CO₂, promote marine ecosystem monitoring, and lower the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) by 2.5%.

Technological Solutions

In order to reach its objectives, the project has the ambition to evolve and test several technological solutions, bringing them beyond the state of the art.

Multi-agent coordination and safe monitoring with human-in-the-loop.
Edge intelligence for mitigating sub-sea hindrances using multimodal perception.
 Contextual awareness for robot-robot cooperation for offshore operations.
Energy and risk-aware motion planning techniques for UAV, USV and ROV.
Real-time target referenced flight control and close-range navigation for enabling BVLOS operations of heterogeneous robots.
Autonomous aerial robot with dual-arm manipulation capability for offshore coating maintenance.
Autonomous robotized operations for underwater cleaning resilient to the rupture and high latency communications.
Online reconfiguration capability for underwater robot considering energy-aware interventions, station keeping and hydrodynamic constraints.
Autonomous monitoring of cetaceans under challenging weather conditions using long range UAS.
Digital twin framework for planning and monitoring unmanned robotic operations with augmented reality, spatial computing, and data analytics.
AI-as-a-Service framework for automatic defect detection on OWFs.
Validation process for robotics and AI solutions fostering legal and regulatory frameworks for IMR activities.

These technologies will be tested in real world scenarios.