Which drones & robots are driving innovation in the climate tech?

The energy sector is amid a seismic shift, driven by the growing demand for sustainable energy solutions. At the same time, the decarbonization expectations are paired with cost scrutiny, especially given the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and war in Ukraine.

In these circumstances, a few climate tech players realized that the best way to bring innovation is through high-value use cases. When the industry is watching every dollar twice, the business outcome is of utmost importance. When the industry is acute to safety, reliability, and highly risk-averse, you need to provide results right away, using a solution that is easy to understand and master.

Enter drones and robots, the tech superheroes of the energy industry. They are revolutionizing how we operate and maintain critical energy infrastructures. They are reducing the environmental impact of established workflows. They are key to increasing safety and eliminating dangerous activities from engineers’ schedules.

At ClimateHub we would like to highlight 5 drones & robotics providers tackling high-value use cases across utilities and energy players across the world.

Flyability - Indoor Inspections & Confined Spaces

Flyability is a company that pioneered confined space inspection drones, creating new technology that allows inspectors to collect data remotely inside dangerous confined spaces instead of in person. Since launching in 2014, Flyability has become a trusted provider of internal inspection solutions, enabling remote data collection with cutting-edge hardware and software for inspection professionals to help them improve safety, reduce downtimes, and cut costs for their internal inspections.

Elios 3 is the latest generation of Flyability’s flagship product - one of the most intuitive, reliable, and precise indoor inspection drones in the market. It is designed for indoor inspection, with a ruggedized cage, which makes it ideal for confined spaces. Elios 3 is the only drone in the market that can recover from flipping upside-down without crashing.

Flyability works in every industry that requires internal inspections, including Power Generation, Oil & Gas, Mining, Wastewater Infrastructure, Chemicals, Maritime, and Infrastructure & Utilities.

Typical use cases where customers use Elios:

• Boiler inspections in the coal-fired plants

• Internal wind turbine blade inspection

• Inspecting no-go zones in nuclear power plants

Percepto - Drone in a Box for Autonomous Drones Inspections

Percepto is the leading autonomous inspection and monitoring solution provider, revolutionizing how industrial sites monitor and inspect their critical infrastructure and assets.

The platform is the end-to-end visual data management solution, from capture to insight, automating and unifying visual data collected by any device - any drone, robot, sensor, or camera.

Percepto offers its own, drone-in-a-box solution. The kit consists of a Percepto drone and a base. Drones can handle versatile payloads and are made for industrial environments and the outdoors, operable in extreme weather, and designed for infrequent maintenance.

Drones live in the customers' site, protected and sheltered in their Percepto Base, able to self-launch without the need for an operator on site.

Next to the drone, Percepto AIM is a software solution that enables you to perform end-to-end remote inspections. You can plan and fly missions with your existing drones or robots, with data automatically uploaded, managed, and analyzed by AIM, unified, and converted into actionable insights.

Percepto is most often used in industrial assets such as:

• refineries

• ports and terminals

• mines

• solar PV plants

• power lines

DJI - Largest Drone OEM in the World

DJI is the global leader in developing and manufacturing innovative drone and camera technology for commercial and recreational use. Based in Shenzhen, China the company has built a hardware empire that controls more than 70% of the global consumer and enterprise drone market by combining low-cost hardware with value-added software that appeals to consumers, professionals, and businesses.

Although DJI completely dominates the consumer market, its products were noticed by utilities.

The DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced features a small footprint, but despite its compact frame, it is a powerful platform for external wind turbine inspections.

Its dual 4K thermal sensor can detect minor defects typically found during a wind inspection, including cracking, delamination, and structural issues.

Equipping the RTK module is effective for real-time positioning data, creating waypoints as the drone moves throughout a wind turbine. Additional add-ons like the loudspeaker are great for communicating with the ground team throughout the inspection process.

Thanks to that the drone is often used during EPC projects in oil & gas, for pipeline integrity monitoring as well as vegetation management across the power grid.

Voliro - Non-destructive testing (NDT) Inspections

Voliro is a Swiss startup developing drones for contact-based inspections. The company is developing advanced flying robots to perform Inspection and maintenance tasks more safely, cost-effectively, and faster than traditional methods.

With its tiltable rotor system, Voliro expands the abilities of service drones from “fly and see” to “fly, see and touch”. The flying robot can be equipped with a variety of payloads, such as Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) sensors. The unique 360° drone design of the platform allows inspection of curved and sloped surfaces. No other flying inspection robot boasts these capabilities.

Voliro is being used by companies such as Shell, Petronas, and Holcim.

ANYbotics - Autonomous Robots for Industrial Inspections

ANYbotics is most famous for its red-colors robot dog similar to Spot by Boston Dynamics.

ANYmal is equipped with four legs that allow it to walk up and down stairs, over obstacles, under overhangs, tackle slopes, and even navigate across gaps. In addition to great mobility, sensors onboard can read gauges, record audio, and do thermal imaging, it can also 3D map its surroundings to learn more about the space it operates in and navigates better. ANYmal recharges itself at charging stations that can be set up in a central location or along predetermined routes.

ANYmal autonomously navigates complex multi-story environments. Once guided through the environment, the robot remembers every detail and finds the quickest route to perform its mission. During operation, the robot’s system safely avoids obstacles and reliably moves over rough terrain.

ANYmal is waterproof and weatherproof, sparing your staff unnecessary exposure to harsh or dangerous conditions. It’s worth highlighting that ANYMal is the only lagged robot with EX-certification making it well-suited for use in Oil & Gas and Chemicals industries.

Drones & robotics serve as powerful catalysts for innovation and can help drive progress and growth in various domains across the energy industry. Most of the companies did 1-2 Proof of Concepts projects and are moving to operationalization and deploying robots at scale. It’s true that although hardware costs are dropping thanks to economies of scale, robotics solutions are not suited for every use case.

With regard to autonomous robots, as an industry we have made significant progress on an academic level, having resolved two out of the three requirements. Specifically, we have successfully tackled spatial awareness and the learning loop, both of which are key to human-like functioning. The only remaining obstacle is the development of robot hardware that can move in a manner similar to that of humans. Nonetheless, we are making headway toward this goal, and it is exhilarating to observe that in several domains and tasks, we have already arrived at a satisfactory level of progress.

Besides the products listed in this post, there are a few other solutions, both hardware and software-based that are heavily used across the energy industry.

Would you like to discover those?

Simply click the link below!